
Class PH^2J*7 

Book *o% 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PRODUCING IN LITTLE 
THEATERS 



BY 

CLARENCE STRATTON 



AUTHOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1921 






Copyright, 1921 

EY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 






OCT 29 19?' 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 

Wat 0uinn & J3oben Companp 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



§)CI.A630064 



-* 



Quella milizia del 
Celeste regno. 

Dante 



PREFATORY NOTE 

In gathering material and illustrations for this volume 
I have applied to a great many active workers in little 
theater productions in all parts of the country and have 
secured information which I hope I have adequately repre- 
sented in the text, and received hundreds of photographs. 

I regret that more of these could not be included as illus- 
trations. I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness and to 
express my thanks to Miss Alice Gerstenberg; to Miss 
Neelye Dickson of the Community Theater at Hollywood, 
California; to Miss Alice Boughton of New York; to Miss 
Hallie Gelbart of Hartford; to Mrs. Arthur Aldis of Lake 
Forest, Illinois; to Mr. Samuel E. Eliot, Jr., of Smith Col- 
lege; to Mr. Daniel Quirk of the Ypsilanti, Michigan, 
Players; to Mr. T. Kajiwara of Saint Louis; to Professor 
A. M. Drummond of Cornell; to Mr. Charles Rann Ken- 
nedy; to Mr. Boyd Martin of the University of Louisville; 
to Mr. John Steinke of Cleveland; to Mr. Thomas Wood 
Stevens of Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; to Mr. William 
Ziegler Nourse of Chicago; to Fakes, Bisbee, and Robert- 
son, interior decorators, of New York ; to the Yale Dramatic 
Association; to Mr. Eugene O'Neill; to the Provincetown 
Theater; to Mr. C. Raymond Jonson of Chicago; to Mr. 
Glenn Hughes of the University of Washington; to Mr. 
Frederick H. Koch of the University of North Carolina; 
to the Stuy vesant Players of New York ; to the College Club 
of Cleveland; to the Little Theater of Denver. 

Cleveland, 192 i 

v 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Growing Interest in Dramatic Produc- 
tions i 

II. Organizing an Amateur Group .... 5 

III. Choosing the Play ....... 23 

IV. Some Specimen Programs 46 

V. Rehearsing the Play ...... 64 

VI. Artistic Amateur Settings 90 

VII. Creating the Stage Picture . , . . 108 

VIII. Costumes and Make-Up 135 

IX. Lighting 150 

X. Experimenting 176 

XI. Educational Dramatics 197 

Appendix — 

Two Hundred Plays Suitable for Amateurs: 

A. One Hundred Full-Length Plays . . 227 

B. One Hundred One- Act Plays . . . 238 

Index 239 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE MAN OF DESTINY Frontispiece 

PAGE 

BOUND EAST FOR CARDIFF. The Provincetown ■ 

Wharf Theater 6 

Rehearsal of THIRST 6 

Rehearsal at University of Louisville ...... j 

Rehearsal of THE POT BOILER 7 

Little Theaters in Ypsilanti, Cleveland, New York State 

Fair, Los Angeles jg 

THE PACKAGE FROM LEXINGTON. University of 

Louisville jn 

GREEN STOCKINGS Ig 

THE EMPEROR JONES. Provincetown Theater . . 3 g 

Artists' Guild. 

TENTS OF THE ARABS -39 

A GOOD BARGAIN 39 

Design for a room e 

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA. Lyric Theater .... 51 

Hammersmith. 

THE RIVALS • • 51 

FALSE GODS. Smith College 54 

ATALANTA IN CALYDON. Carnegie Institute . . 55 

ANTIGONE. Bennett School ....... 66 

THE FOOL FROM THE HILLS 66 

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Smith College . . 67 

Models of Scenery, Central High School, St. Louis . . 86 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

BUSHIDO. Wells College 87 

LE MALADE IMAGINAIRE 87 

Rear of scenery IO o 

THE SHEPHERD IN THE DISTANCE. Little Theater, 

Denver 98 

Smith College 98 

Scenery designs. 

THE PRETTY SABINE WOMEN .... 99 

THE MAKER OF DREAMS 99 

Various shapes of interiors 104 

Interior of room. Combination of pieces .... I0 6 

THE BRACELET. Cornell Dramatic Club .... 118 

DREAM BOATS. College Club, Cleveland .... 118 

INTERIOR. Community Theater, Hollywood . . .119 

Cottage interior with sloping ceiling 122 

POMANDER WALK. Central High School, Washington 130 

PIERROT'S CHRISTMAS. The Artists' Guild, St. Louis 134 

PRUNELLA. University of Washington . . . .131 
THE CHINESE LANTERN. Central High School, St. 

Louis 135 

QUALITY STREET. Hathaway-Brown School, Cleveland 150 

ROSALIND. Hickox Studio, Chicago 150 

THE STORM. Hickox Studio, Chicago 151 

EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND 1$l 

Lighting arrangement for THE CHINESE LANTERN . j6 5 

THE AULIS DIFFICULTY. Yale Dramatic Association 162 
THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS. The Play- 
House, Lake Forest 166 

THE LADY WITH THE DAGGER. Community The- 
ater, Hollywood 163 

THE LOCKED CHEST. Little Theater, Denver . . 180 
THE BEAR. Stuyvesant Players, New York . . .174 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

PAN. The Playhouse, Cleveland . . .... .181 

THE CLOD. The Players, Ypsilanti 196 

LOVE IN A KITCHEN 196 

BERNICE. Provincetown Theater, New York . . .197 

THE GAME OF CHESS. Arts Club, Chicago ... 198 
DUST OF THE ROAD .198 

DOD GAST YE BOTH. University of North Carolina . 199 
PEGGY 199 

MRS. PAT AND THE LAW. The Play-House, Lake 

Forest 210 

ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The Playhouse, Chicago . 211 



PRODUCING IN LITTLE 
THEATERS 



CHAPTER I 

GROWING INTEREST IN DRAMATIC 
PRODUCTIONS 

There is no doubt that during the next few years there 
will be more participation throughout the United States in 
amateur dramatics than ever before. Even before the war 
had drawn its thousands of men and women from regular 
life there were indications of a wide spreading of dramatic 
interest. Every elementary and secondary school presented 
plays. Courses in dramatics and play production were 
being introduced into nearly every college and university. 
Even churches were engaging in dramatic activities; some 
timidly venturing no further than religious drama; others 
quite frankly providing entertainment by offering plays 
of many different kinds. It is reported that there are some 
ten thousand acting groups connected with churches. The 
community idea of entertainment and recreation was widen- 
ing to include acting as an attractive pursuit. 

The period of seeming inactivity during the war did not 
block the attempts of enthusiasts ; in all likelihood it stimu- 
lated the determination to produce plays, for wherever 



2 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

bodies of men were in training or service, entertainments 
of all kinds were demanded and supplied, often in forms 
new and fascinating to dwellers of regions where similar 
performances were unknown. As thousands of these men 
and women were initiated by force of circumstances into 
the process of providing dramatic material, as many of them 
were even drafted as performers, they learned a few rudi- 
ments of the attractive art which they have been exercising 
since they have returned to their former pursuits. Many 
of them, living in sequestered villages or rural districts 
where no attempt has ever been made to provide dramatic 
fare, have enthusiastically set about supplying the lack by 
producing plays themselves. 

In larger centers, likewise, this impulse to produce plays 
has not died because of absence of opportunity. From one 
phase of the War Camp Community Service has developed 
a Committee on Memorials, one of whose laudable efforts 
is to induce communities to build worthy, living reminders 
of their heroic dead; to erect attractive buildings in which 
all noble civic and social interests may be fostered. Nearly 
every building plan recommended by this committee con- 
tains an auditorium with a practicable stage. Every effort 
of this efficient service is being directed to helping architects 
and builders to make that stage and that audience space 
available for all possible uses — including, as not the least, 
the production of plays. The number of such community 
centers increases so rapidly that any figures quoted here 
would be insignificant when compared with actuality. No 
matter how high the estimate might be placed, while the 
statement was being read, the exaggeration would end, for 



INTEREST IN DRAMATIC PRODUCTIONS 3 

the number of completed and projected memorials would 
have passed that total. Soon almost countless localities In 
this country will have houses in which good plays can be 
adequately rehearsed and performed. Then will drama, now 
restricted to so few cities and towns because of long runs, 
increased railroad charges, and the growing dislike of the 
best performers to undergo the discomforts of travel and 
the uncertainty of reception by inexperienced audiences, 
spread to nearly every part of the land to entertain, edu- 
cate, and stimulate people in ways which no other human 
agencies can ever equal. 

Cities with playgrounds, and open-air theaters, workshop 
and laboratory playhouses, public and private schools with 
usually badly constructed stages but surprisingly good per- 
formances, societies of all sorts, are inducing many-sided 
participation in dramatics. 

From all parts of the United States come reports of seri- 
ous undertakings. From all parts come requests for lists 
of plays, addresses of supply houses, methods of rehears- 
ing, designs for settings. One publisher of plays reports 
that his mail business in the Southwest equals his entire 
demand of a few years ago. A professional scenery builder 
sends each year a representative through several states to 
design stage settings in schools and other buildings contem- 
plated or being erected. Orders for stage equipment in a 
city of Florida are filled in a shop as far away as Saint 
Louis. Costumes for a historical drama have been shipped 
from Philadelphia to a town in Texas. 

Linked with such material progress are appeals for meth- 
ods to follow in organizing and managing amateur dramatic 



4 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

societies. This indicates a sane procedure, for many a 
society with every other factor operating for its success 
has hesitated or failed because of defects in preliminary 
organization or in regular control. Others begin under the 
most propitious auspices imaginable, only to meet wreck 
and ruin from incompetence or impracticableness which is 
entirely unforeseen at the time of the sanguine but badly 
managed organization. 

The annals of amateur play production are crammed with 
weird stories of eruptions and disruptions. 



CHAPTER II 
ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 

Organized effort does not mean necessarily affiliation 
with a large movement. Your dramatics may be purely 
local. Perhaps in most communities this is best. Then the 
performances will be sources of local pride. The enthusiasm 
will be spontaneous and concentrated. The lessons learned 
from defects and merits may be applied to local conditions 
at once. And above all, such an arrangement should arouse 
a valuable sense of loyalty. Frequently, movements spread 
widely over the entire country waste upon " causes " or 
" ideals " energy which should go into actual dramatic pro- 
ductions. The wrangling about policies, and more powerful 
still as a bone of contention, the collection of assessments 
and the disbursement of funds, consume time and atten- 
tion which is necessarily taken from the stated and sup- 
posedly intended purpose of the organization to be busied 
with play production. 

Such large projects as community masques and pageants, 
municipal operas and plays, patriotic spectacles and cele- 
brations, which because of their magnitude and temporary 
enthusiasm present phases of organization not likely to con- 
front the average amateur society, will be disregarded here. 

A few other declarations of fact will further prepare for 
the practical details which this section will attempt to offer 
as help in arranging for dramatics in your own locality. 

5 



6 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

It is not expected that amateur performances will replace 
the regular professional theater. They will merely supple- 
ment it. They will result in increased attendance at pro- 
fessional plays. 

Amateur acting societies will never be able to include all 
the inhabitants of any one locality in a performance. If 
such an undesirable thing occurred who would remain to 
constitute the audience? To accomplish such a result, even 
were it possible, would be the reductio ad absurdum of act- 
ing. Think, too, of the level of acting in such a dispersion 
of the mimetic art. Certain groups of people will always 
want to act. Other larger groups will always want to look 
on. These two — the active and the passive — merely need 
to be drawn closely together. 

Producing plays always entails a great deal of continu- 
ous hard work. This fact is fundamental, though many 
persons seem to disregard it whenever acting is discussed. 
Some persons exclaim enthusiastically, " Let's give a play," 
and then fold their hands complacently, as though they ex- 
pected the play to produce itself. 

Performances cannot be given without expense. 

Let us now consider some of the details involved in dra- 
matic ventures. 

What shall your organization be called? The name you 
choose should suggest the nature of your attempt. There- 
fore you must consider very carefully exactly what you 
are going to attempt. Have you any special purpose? Can 
you expect to interest large and fluctuating bodies of in- 
dividuals in a narrow or propaganda purpose? The name 
should be modest rather than pretentious, impressive rather 





Plays by Eugene O'Neill, Wharf Theater, Province- 
town. 

Above : Bound East for Cardiff. 



Below: Rehearsal of Thirst. In performance the sky, 
without a wrinkle, met the water in a perfect 
horizon. 





Rehearsals 



Above. Scene shifting, The Work Shop, University 

of Louisville. . 

Below : The Pot Boiler, by Alice Gerstenberg. The 

corner of a large theater stage. 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 7 

than high-sounding. What would people expect of a So- 
ciety for the Improvement of Dramatic Art in America? 
Its name would pledge it to a program almost impossible of 
inauguration. What will improve " dramatic art in Amer- 
ica "? Could all its members agree upon methods of " im- 
provement "? It would be valuable to examine the pro- 
grams of an organization laboring under such a name, read 
printed reviews of its productions, and learn how long it 
continued to exist. In all things dramatic, failures are as 
helpful to workers as are successes. The name should con- 
note stage-craft without, however, binding to rigidity an 
organization needing fluxion and adaptability. It should 
not antagonize audiences. It should not state purposes 
which it cannot carry out. If you cannot find some ex- 
pression to answer to all these requirements you can get 
along just as well by using your local name and christening 
the group the Pittsburgh Players, the South Bend Dramatic 
Club, the Alameda Acting Association. 

Do not merely adopt the name of some other club. Cer- 
tain groups have tried to win patronage by calling them- 
selves Neighborhood Players after one excellent association 
in New York even though their members are not connected 
with any Neighborhood House, serve no limited section, 
and draw from no localized vicinity. Little Theaters might 
just as well be definitely identified also. Toy Theater Com- 
panies suffer slightly from the suggestion of trifling con- 
noted by the name. It would be incongruous to see Electra 
or Ghosts or Justice or Dregs in a toy theater. Exclusive 
groups should not be labeled Community Theater com- 
panies. That word should be reserved for true community 



8 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

endeavors. Would any one expect a Comedy Club to pre- 
sent tragedies or even such a somber play as The Girl in the 
Coffin? The attractive equipment of the quaintly named 
Portmanteau Theater lost much of its significance and the 
value of its name when the paraphernalia was set upon the 
stage of a large professional theater. Such placement con- 
fined to a small space action which could have been with 
more effect spread over the full stage. It inserted its own 
restricted hangings where wider sweeps were desirable and 
available. It was at least unnecessary, even if not entirely 
inappropriate. " MacDougall's Barn " was a good name 
so long as plays were performed in a barn or some other 
crude interior, but the name seemed banal or worthless 
when the bill was transferred for an evening to the Cohan 
and Harris Theater in New York. 

The well-deserved success of the New York Theater Guild 
has already induced two other cities to use that fitting ap- 
pellation. Laboratory theaters may well be limited to the 
actual classrooms of college courses. Workshop theaters 
and theater workshops seem to place more emphasis upon 
experiment than performance, causing a reflex apathy in 
audiences. Would a group called The New Players dare 
to produce an old Greek drama, even Lysistrata, the theme 
of which is as modern as the play is old? 

Many groups are already happily denominated. This 
list may suggest some similar expression as suitable for 
yours. The Mask and Wig Club, Sock and Buskin, Paint 
and Powder, Triangle Club, Hasty Pudding, Talma Club, 
Plays and Players, Philistine Players, East-West Players, 
Little Country Theater, Vagabond Theater, Campus Thea- 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 9 

ter, Harlequin Players, Studio Players, Caravan Theater, 
Arts and Crafts, Art Theater, Prairie Players, Junior Play- 
ers, Temple Players, Independent Theater, Pioneer Players, 
Thimble Theater, Everyman Theater. 

Your choice of name should depend also upon the pur- 
pose of your society. 

Do not start out with the avowed intention of reform- 
ing the American drama. Attempt something you will be 
likely in some degree to accomplish. If you intend merely 
to present plays without limiting your efforts to any one 
kind, and sincerely try to present them well, this is not an 
insignificant ambition. Better purposes are to provide 
performances of distinctive dramas not likely to appear 
upon the professional stage, to develop the acting ability of 
members, and to respond to a growing demand for the best 
dramatic literature of all times and languages. Any organ- 
ization pledged to this last deserves every measure of suc- 
cess, for it will be satisfying a natural, worthy need. Best 
of all, its audience is now ready and waiting for it. 

In actual organization the society may be a small acting 
group. In such cases the advantages are that the few mem- 
bers secure continuous training in rehearsal and perform- 
ance. They have many chances to experiment with individ- 
ualistic interpretations. As the season progresses it is fair 
to believe that they will advance markedly in stage behavior 
and characterization. Working together, they will soon de- 
velop a sense of artistic cooperation, and if they can stifle 
in themselves the temperamental desire for personal glori- 
fication, they should be able to offer harmonious produc- 
tions. If the natural disposition to "stardom" can be 



io PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

neutralized, so that the performer of the lead in one pro- 
duction will be content to sink to a minor role in the next, 
there should result a harmony of acting as well as harmony 
of temperaments. In such a restricted group of actors 
there is always the tendency to crystallize into type roles, 
making it almost impossible for the director to change 
conditions. Amateurs know the composition of profes- 
sional companies, and will try to reproduce that arrangement 
for themselves. 

On the other hand there is another danger, for the audi- 
ence may become tired of seeing so frequently the same 
performers in the different casts, no matter how well they 
act. Professional stock companies produce this same im- 
pression of monotony. Many a spectator of every season's 
bills has sighed inwardly as he glanced at his program, 
" Oh, they use her in everything! " In one such group a 
certain woman was allowed to monopolize all the leads. No 
longer young, she was manifestly unsuited to most of the 
roles. Her best experience had been gained in old-fashioned 
poetic drama, so that in modern situations she was decid- 
edly out of the pictures. Having been accustomed to don 
costumes of the past, she paid little attention to the essen- 
tially feminine art of making a good appearance, and there- 
fore was never able in modern plays to " dress the part." 
But she was the best memorizer of the group, the most will- 
ing, the hardest worker, so she became the most prominent, 
even though her presence spoiled many a performance. A 
compromise which will produce the best results from a 
small group is to have it large enough to allow telling variety 
in combinations, and then insisting upon the variety. 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP n 

A large group in which any person may be called upon 
to participate frequently also has peculiar dangers. If 
some members are not used often enough to please them- 
selves or their friends, they see no reason for belonging; 
they lose interest and withdraw. To offset this feeling of 
non-participation a director must try to include as many 
members as possible. It is a matter of pride with nearly 
every such large organization to accomplish this. At the 
end of a season a company tries to prove its communism of 
effort by recapitulating the use made of its personnel. Such 
modest declarations of self-congratulation as the following 
paraphrased from an annual statement are frequent: "A 
total of eighty-eight people have assisted with the music, 
properties, costumes, direction, dancing, programs, advertis- 
ing, business management, and sale of tickets. Of this 
number forty-six have not acted in the plays. One hundred 
eighteen different persons acted. Of this number one ap- 
peared five times, two others four times, and twenty-six 
have appeared twice. Thus a total of one hundred sixty- 
four contributed to the efforts of this organization in a single 
year." 

If, because of ability or friendship or social prestige, a 
certain few are cast several times, jealousies and envy and 
all uncharitableness break out virulently. 

A good flexible working arrangement is to have active 
and associate memberships with the prospect of adding to 
both, or making transfers, as the need arises. Every society 
should determine for itself exactly what differences of stand- 
ing, privilege, voting, dues, tickets, tenure of office, shall dis- 
tinguish active from passive membership. 



12 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

When membership is assured the usual officers of any 
organization should be elected. To these must be added a 
staff of workers and directors, each a specialist or a student 
of a peculiar activity. Most important of all will be the 
producer, the person directly and personally responsible for 
the working out of the details of any project from the time 
a play is selected until the curtain descends upon its per- 
formance. In some organizations this official is the mem- 
ber best fitted for this work. In this case he may be elected, 
or appointed to do the work for an entire season. Some- 
times he is a professional hired in a business-like manner 
upon a formal contract, and retained only so long as his 
services suit his employers. A great many little theater 
organizations in this country follow this plan. A much more 
enjoyable plan, though it must be admitted that it pro- 
duces palpitation of the heart over some appearances, is 
to have a different producer for each play. In a bill of four 
one-act plays, four different producers would be represented 
upon the program. Such a method results in more active 
participation of more members than others detailed here. It 
raises the level of the methods by comparison, imitation, 
and emulation. It develops originality of method. Per- 
sons who have produced are frequently by that experience 
rendered better performers. Many a performer develops 
into a better producer. It overcomes the lethargy of non- 
participants, as there is always the keenness of judging a 
new or different producer's results. Whether these pro- 
ducers be elected by the entire membership or appointed 
by the governing board, they should be required to carry 
out their assignments, or pay a fine for release unless a 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 13 

legitimate reason is offered. Such a plan will result in ex- 
hibitions by some dozen producers during a season. The 
educative value of such variety to the audiences as well as 
to the individuals themselves is incalculable. 

Writers who would pattern every amateur activity upon 
the model of professional companies always stipulate that 
a producer or director must have a stage-manager to hold 
the book during rehearsals, to mark business, to prompt, to 
make property lists, to see that the stage is set, to give mu- 
sic cues, to ring the curtain up and down, etc. My own 
observation is that most amateur producers do practically 
all of these things themselves, or distribute them. The nec- 
essity for such a versatile stage-manager exists in profes- 
sional companies because the producer retires after the per- 
formance has been repeated a few times, when the stage- 
manager replaces him for the odd jobs which must still be 
overseen. 

The stage-manager in amateur arrangements usually fills 
the slightly higher function of assistant director. 

Around the director there should be grouped a produc- 
tions committee, every member of which should be a special- 
ist in a certain phase of theater art. One should be the 
scenery designer or adapter. Closely associated with him 
should be the furniture and decorating expert. Working 
in closest accord with these should be the costume designer 
or maker. Another member should collect properties. In 
all discussions the lighting director should participate with 
helpful advice or practical objections. Not so deeply im- 
plicated yet important at times is the music director. There 
may even be an amateur make-up artist who wishes to know 



i 4 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the play intimately in order to expedite preliminaries at 
dress-rehearsal and performance. These active leaders 
should form the working body of control over every pro- 
duction, themselves as individuals and as a group subject 
to the officers or executive board of the organization. 

Then every one of these leaders should have under him or 
her a working committee to execute commissions and pro- 
duce results. The scene designer may design, but have one 
of his assistants finish the colored drawing to scale. The 
draping expert may determine color; her assistants may 
scour the homes of members to find the suitable lamp- 
shades. The furniture enthusiast may describe an orna- 
ment, but one of her assistants may be the only one who 
knows how to create it from glue, paper-pulp, and paints. 
The music director should be given exact requirements, then 
proceed to fill them. He cannot be allowed to provide any- 
thing he pleases as incidental or entr'acte music. While 
music may be an aid to some plays, it may be entirely out 
of keeping with others. In this latter case this member of 
the committee should be courteously instructed that he and 
his assistants will not be used in this production. I do not 
believe that the place of the best musician your society 
has can be adequately filled by a graphophone off-stage. 
Some musicians are almost adamant against pleas to fur- 
nish off-stage music, as for a street song in Sabotage or a 
dance in The Holiday, yet their sense of loyalty and co- 
operation in a worthy enterprise should be aroused for even 
such humble tasks. 

A play-reading committee is frequently a time and labor 
saving arrangement for executive boards. There will every 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 15 

season be specifications of certain kinds to be fulfilled. One 
season may have shown the need of a lighter touch in the 
plays. The members of the play-reading committee then 
search for that kind of material. A bill in prospect is too 
light ; it needs a stabilizing item. A search is made for that. 
Readers should meet frequently and discuss freely. Their 
written recommendations giving full explanations should 
be sent to the executive board or to the producer frequently, 
so that these persons may have leisure in which to examine 
possible material. 

The business or finance committee is almost entirely 
separate in function from the preceding. Its chairman 
may have to confer with other chairmen at times, but once 
the policy is adopted, the play chosen, the producer in- 
structed, the budget estimated, the work of the business 
committee is entirely distinct from the activity of the pro- 
ductions committee. In theatrical parlance the latter is 
concerned only with the " back of the house," that portion 
behind the proscenium; the former committee controls the 
" front of the house." 

The composition and duties of all other committees will 
take form from the three chief bodies just outlined here — 
the officers or executive board of the entire organization, 
the productions committee, the business or finance commit- 
tee. For instance, a membership committee springs from 
the executive board. A stage model committee would be an 
outgrowth of the productions group. A printing or adver- 
tising committee would spring from the business organiza- 
tion. Others might be concerned with suppers, guests, lec- 
tures, publicity, photographs, library, building fund, nomi- 



i6 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

nations, cooperation with other groups, or circuiting per- 
formances. 

Quite as important as membership is money. No play, 
I venture to say, however simple, can be produced without 
at least buying the copies. This is the fundamental first 
expense. To it many others are added. Play production 
costs money. Your club may start on nothing a year, and, 
if you can secure credit, may pay the bills you incur with 
the proceeds of the first performance, if you are successful 
in attracting a paying audience. Some organizations charge 
dues of varying amounts up to say ten dollars annually. 
In cooperative plans the members advance enough to cover 
the first performance, and are repaid at the end of the sea- 
son. A feeling of security and independence alike is af- 
forded by the pledges of guarantors, who should be called 
upon to redeem their pledges only when all other resources 
are exhausted. There is one danger in this scheme. An 
over-enthusiastic director feeling that the guarantors are 
bound to cover any deficit may plunge heavily and so in- 
stead of creating loyalty, may arouse antagonism. 

It is more artistic to insure permanency and solvency 
by being careful about money than to be a fly-by-night pro- 
ducer cleaning up on one splurge. In estimating your total 
income try to be moderate. Do not count every available 
seat as sold until it has been paid for. Provide for the de- 
duction of every legitimate expense. If your income is from 
dues, collect early in the season. Remember that not every 
person listed as a member will pay dues. Estimate the 
usual loss by resignation and removal. With a knowledge 
of your entire resources plan the number of performances 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 17 

and allot the available funds. With two hundred members 
at five dollars each you may reasonably count upon nine 
hundred dollars to spend. If one program is to be made up 
of modern plays for which costumes can be secured for 
nothing, or if a play entails no royalty, you will be able 
to shift money to other undertakings. 

On paid admissions always discount anticipated receipts. 

One of the most fascinating features of such dramatic 
work as this chapter is discussing is the realization of re- 
markable effects upon limited means. Perhaps the best 
aspect of the non-commercial theater is this willingness and 
skill in securing remarkable results with economical and 
inadequate resources. 

The one item which will have the most direct bearing 
upon your expense sheet will be the equipment of the stage 
you use. Whenever you rent be sure to know exactly what 
the terms include. Ask especially about extra time. Learn 
whether the dress rehearsal will require a union stage crew. 
Be clearly informed upon the relation between union stage 
hands and union musicians. Look carefully over the house 
scenery, furniture, and properties to determine how much 
you can use. Know exactly how much of the material 
available you will want to use. The general rule is that the 
rental of a hall with stage, or of a theater, includes all the 
standing scenery and any that may be hanging. In many 
instances it turns out that other amateur organizations have 
left their material in the custody of the theater, and it may 
happen that unless you take special care in finding out such 
things, you may be prevented from using what you con- 
templated. At the last crowded minute you may have to 



1 8 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

secure the consent of several people to utilize the black cur- 
tains or the old gold screens you had counted on for your 
best effects. Yet with all allowances made, the amount of 
valuable assistance which amateur directors are able to en- 
list is amazing. Nearly every one is generous when ama- 
teur productions are impending. Owners of professional 
theaters and members of stage crews are more frequently 
extremely accommodating than the reverse. But it is wise 
not to depend too much on last minute round-ups. In all 
affairs dramatic, preparation is always better than regret. 
In planning for your finances prepare a budget, even 
though you know at the time that the final bills will go 
higher. They always do. In financial phases of organiza- 
tion and control nothing makes advice so impressive as do 
figures. A few excerpts from expense accounts of societies 
in various sections of the country, with an analysis of 
some of the items, will make concrete the general recom- 
mendations already given. These tabulations will also in- 
dicate how different bodies of actors emphasize different 
aspects of productions. 

The subjoined list attempts to include all the possibilities 
which may be present under varying circumstances. If you 
are able to eliminate many of these you are peculiarly for- 
tunate. 

Postage. This varies greatly with the nature of the or- 
ganization and the performances. 

Printing. In your stationery make modest claims. Let 
it make a good impression. Don't promise too much. Ad- 
vertising may come under this heading. 

Rental. This is usually* the largest item. Reductions 





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Dramatic Work Shop, University of Louisville 
Parts of the same scenery arranged in two different 

sets. 

Above: The Package from Lexington, by George Ade. 



Below: Green Stockings, by A. E. W. Mason. 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 19 

can be secured by contracting for a number of perform- 
ances. Possibly you can have rehearsals at odd times when 
the stage is not engaged. Professional houses are more 
likely to grant you this privilege than private halls. The 
rental for a dress rehearsal is always less than for a perform- 
ance. If you are obliged to engage union stage hands and 
musicians you may sometimes save money by having the 
dress rehearsal the afternoon of the same day as the per- 
formance. Of course this complicates other matters, but it 
does save money. 

Royalties, and Copies of the Plays. Copies of a sin- 
gle play for a cast may cost as much as ten or fifteen dol- 
lars, either in typoscript or book form. Scores of the best 
plays are either out of print or buried in issues of little 
known and locally circulated periodicals. It is next to im- 
possible to secure copies of some plays. If you doubt this, 
ask your book dealer to supply you with ten copies for your 
cast of Moliere's he Bourgeois Gentilhomme. I doubt if he 
will be able to supply you with four copies of any one good 
translation. Always pay royalties for modern plays, unless 
authors offer them for nothing. You would not ask a sta- 
tioner to give you envelopes, nor a grocer tea for an Eng- 
lish comedy. Don't then, expect authors to give you the 
only thing which makes your organization possible — good 
plays. 

Settings, Scenery, Furniture, Properties. Here the 
artistic ingenuity of your art staff will be requisitioned. 

Costumes. You may be able to operate an entire sea- 
son without expending much on costumes. Don't allow 
some enthusiastic designer to swamp the plays with oddities 



20 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

and the treasurer with bills. One art director spent so much 
money for costumes of a one-act play in the first bill that 
the season was almost wrecked on that single production. 
By eschewing period and romantic material for the remain- 
der of the winter the season was just successfully financed. 

Lighting. If the equipment of your stage is good, this 
will cost practically nothing. If you use a non-professional 
stage, you can easily accumulate simple but effective light- 
ing apparatus. 

Make-up. Hiring a professional make-up man usually 
saves money and annoyance. His stock of wigs is always 
better than an amateur collection. In many plays ade- 
quate make-up is required. A company make-up box is a 
great saving if individuals know how to use its contents. If 
an active member can make up the performers he should 
be pressed into participation. 

Hauling. Scenery, properties, furniture, costumes may 
have to be moved. Costumers do not pay transportation 
charges. 

Miscellaneous. Perhaps this division should have been 
placed first, for though this heading is indefinite, it always 
covers a large amount. It may include anything; flowers, 
ropes, electric bulbs, unusual properties, telegrams, porter 
service, labor, lunches, beverages, damage to property, taxi- 
cab fares, insurance on borrowed property, music, wiring, 
tacks, broken dishes, doorman, delivery boy, expressage, 
hardware, window panes to be shattered, cigars, cigarettes, 
drinks, animals, birds, tips. 

The following are copies of actual expense sheets of pro- 
ductions in various parts of the country. Inspection and 



ORGANIZING AN AMATEUR GROUP 21 

comparison of the items will indicate what matters must be 
considered and provided for in advance. Notice that cos- 
tume hire and rental may be entailed or not incurred. The 
entries for scenery deserve thought. The sundries further 
illustrate the remarks made in the preceding paragraph on 
miscellaneous expenses. 

SPECIMEN EXPENSE SHEETS 
Three One- Act Plays 

Rental $ 46.50 

Stage Help 18.00 

Printing Programs 5.67 

Printing Tickets 3.25 

Photographs 16.00 

Hauling 2.75 

Doorman 2.00 

Books 1.50 

Scenery 66.95 

Costumes and Make-up 24.70 

Gold Paint 85 

Royalties 45.00 

$233.17 
Three One-Act Plays 

Rental $ 61.50 

Doorman 2.00 

Books 1.75 

Printing Tickets 8.75 

Printing Programs 13.80 

Expenses of Production Committee . . 48.80 

Typing Parts 4.00 

Make-up Material 3.50 

Porter Service 1.00 

$145.10 
A Full-Length Play 

Rental $ 73.00 

Books 14-45 

Printing Tickets 6.80 

Scenery 1 10.00 

Stage Help 10.00 

Expenses of Production Committee . . 27.50 

$241.75 



22 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

High School Production 

he Bourgeois Gentilhomme 

30 costumes, dress rehearsal and per- 
formance $ ^5.00 

Make-up, twice 15.00 

Hauling 3.00 

Typing parts 3.40 

Janitor's fees 4.00- 

Printing programs, tickets 31.00 

$13140 

We shall assume that it is early autumn. Your organiza- 
tion is perfected. Your officers and committees have been 
working during the spring and summer if possible, or at 
least during several weeks, and reporting. Your funds are 
assured. The public is sympathetic in approval of your 
project. With all your thoughtful allowance for enthusiastic 
overstatement and optimistic credulity, indications of large, 
appreciative audiences are heartening you. Only one detail 
now remains to engage attention and time before your season 
opens. 

What kind of plays will you offer? 



CHAPTER III 
CHOOSING THE PLAY 

After an organization for the presentation of plays has 
been perfected, the first question of importance which arises 
is, " What plays shall it produce? " The first limits to this 
question may be set forth by the provisions of your con- 
stitution or your public announcements. Let me quote a 
few such passages taken at random. I shall omit the names 
of the organizations. 

This group " has been organized to encourage and foster 
the dramatic instinct in young people, to become familiar 
with the best dramatic literature through study and pres- 
entation, also with all the details of the art of stagecraft, 
to the end that the members may develop an enhanced 
sense of life's values and the realization of that culture 
which is characterized by cultivated imagination and sym- 
pathy, as well as information and knowledge." 

" The object shall be to encourage the presentation of 
plays by amateurs, to secure unity of purpose and proce- 
dure in the giving of plays, to provide a systematic and 
diversified program of plays, to conserve available talent 
and material through their largest possible use, and to estab- 
lish a Community Theater." 

" The aim is to add something to the joy of life by the 
presentation of good music and worth while plays." 

23 



24 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

" Our aims are not hard to understand ; to give drama 
with a literary quality, acted and staged with sincerity and 
artistic simplicity — in short, to study the community that 
its theater may express its ideals; to make of the theater 
a place where good drama, wholesome amusements, and in- 
telligent recreation may be enjoyed; a place where may be 
seen those plays seldom seen on the commercial stage — and 
finally to encourage the creative spirit of our own people." 

" This is a permanent little theater organization whose 
policy is to produce new plays by unknown writers with 
the works of standard authors." 

" The aim of the Club has been to present to University 
audiences plays of literary worth by contemporary Euro- 
pean and American dramatists, especially such plays as 
could hardly hope for presentation on the commercial stage, 
and to provide for undergraduates interested in the direc- 
tion, staging, acting, designing, and writing of plays, some 
opportunity to develop their abilities." 

" This is a traveling group of actors organized to put on 
the best plays of the little theater and the new theater move- 
ments before clubs and other private audiences which other- 
wise might not have an opportunity to witness perform- 
ances of these." 

" The purpose of this club shall be to study and rehearse 
significant plays, and to develop the dramatic expression of 
its members." 

" Our aim is not to present great plays by great writers, 
but sincere plays by beginners. We do not seek to uplift 
the drama, but to bring out the best there is in dramatic 
writing." 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 25 

" The workshop is an experimental theater where ideas 
may be worked out in actual stage practice. It will give 
plays by writers of this city and nothing but first produc- 
tions." 

No matter how definitely some purpose has been stated 
in the constitution of the society, there arises continually 
the necessity of deciding which plays to select. The pur- 
pose may be so simple as " to provide entertainments of a 
dramatic character." It may assert that only " plays exem- 
plifying the new movement in the theater are to be acted." 
It may intend to give plays by its own members only. 
Whatever its avowed purpose, decisions must be made 
among possible choices, so that the actual work of produc- 
tion may begin. 

At just this point you had better — unless you are already 
acquainted with its terms and operation — investigate the 
copyright law of the United States. The item of royalty 
was mentioned in the previous chapter in the list of ex- 
penses. It seems strange that persons who would not think 
of taking and using a tack which does not belong to them 
will attempt to take and use what is infinitely more valu- 
able, the product of an author's brain, and then feel badly 
used when they are made to pay for their pleasure. No act- 
ing group, I venture to say, would deliberately take electric 
bulbs from a dealer without arranging for payment, yet* 
scores of them in this country have used plays for which 
they have never paid a dollar. In fact, some persons resent 
the demand of royalty, even when the published play states 
clearly the terms of production. Mr. Shaw told a certain 
American amateur director exactly what he thought of her 



26 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

insistence that he allow her to produce one of his works. 
Authors and publishers are more careful about this matter 
than they used to be. The fact may startle the uninitiated, 
but authors are not always anxious to have their plays per- 
formed by every one who thinks he can do justice to the 
material. You may be refused permission because some 
producer in your neighborhood has already arranged for 
the use of the same play. One author told me she had re- 
fused to allow one of her plays — a delicate, subtle handling 
— to be performed by a small agricultural college. She may 
have been mistaken, but her feeling induced her refusal. 
Many a dramatist who has sat through productions of his 
work has wished that he had refused. 

Notices included in volumes of published plays should 
be quite clear in their intent. If you desire to make your- 
self entirely conversant with all the details of copyright you 
should apply for Copyright Bulletin, Number 14, issued 
by the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, Wash- 
ington. 

Bear in mind, also, that a play in manuscript or typo- 
script, "hot reproduced in copies for sale," as it is described 
by the Copyright Office, may have been copyrighted, and 
if it bears the notice, is as much the dramatist's private 
property — so far as performance is concerned — as though it 
were published in a solid looking book. 

The two following notices, taken from two recent volumes 
of plays from different firms, seem to be clear enough, 
yet an officer of the first told me that hundreds of letters 
come to him asking for exactly the same information so 
clearly stated by the first notice. 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 27 

SPECIAL NOTICE 

These plays in their printed form are designed for 
the reading public only. All dramatic rights in them 
are fully protected by copyright, both in the United 
States and in Great Britain, and no public or private 
performance — professional or amateur — may be given 
without the written permission of the author and the 
payment of royalty. As the courts have also ruled 
that the public reading of a play, for pay or where 
tickets are sold, constitutes a " performance," no such 
reading may be given except under conditions as above 
stated. Any one disregarding the author's rights ren- 
ders himself liable to prosecution. Communications 
should be sent to the author, care of the publishers. 

In its present form this play is dedicated to the 
reading public only, and no performances of it may 
be given without the permission of the authors who 
may be addressed in care of the publisher. Any piracy 
or infringement will be prosecuted in accordance with 
the penalties provided by the United States Statutes: 

Sec. 4966. — Any person publicly performing or rep- 
resenting any dramatic or musical composition, for 
which copyright has been obtained, without the con- 
sent of the proprietor of the said dramatic or musical 
composition, or his heirs or assigns, shall be liable for 
damages in all cases to be assessed at such sum, not 
less than one hundred dollars for the first and fifty 
dollars for every subsequent performance, as to the 
Court shall appear to be just. If the unlawful per- 
formance and representation be wilful, and for profit, 
such person or persons shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, 
and upon conviction be imprisoned for a period not 
exceeding one year. — U. S. Revised Statutes, Title 60. 
Chap. 3. 



28 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

It is unfortunate that the threat of prosecution and fine 
have to be set forth so plainly, but the past — and I regret 
to add it, present — practices of acting groups make it 
necessary. 

The remarkable increase of interest in amateur play- 
production has had some unfortunate results. Sev- 
eral amateurs, it appears, have shown their lack of 
experience by putting on copyrighted plays without 
first securing permission. Doubtless few members of 
schools or clubs would wilfully infringe upon the rights 
of the owners of plays, but ignorance of the law ex- 
cuses no one and carelessness can hardly be urged as 
a defense against prosecution for piracy. 

Such prosecution at least one playwright feels com- 
pelled to institute. Mr. Charles Douville Coburn, who 
owns the rights of production of The Yellow Jacket, 
by George C. Hazelton and Benrimo, has learned of 
several instances of illegal use of this play, and in at 
least three cases must prosecute the offenders in order 
to conserve his own interests. All possible publicity 
should be given his experience in order that amateurs 
throughout the country may be saved from committing 
like offense. 

English Journal, 191 5. 

There are literally thousands of good plays. One list of 
recent American one-act plays alone contains some two hun- 
dred sixty titles. A selected list of titles of plays suit- 
able for schools and colleges includes over four hundred 
entries. How shall the best and most appropriate be chosen? 

Four factors enter into all such considerations: 1. The 
tone or quality of your aims. 2. The actors. 3. The 
stage. 4. The audience. 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 29 

So far as the first of these is concerned, you can easily 
declare that you desire to choose only the best plays writ- 
ten. That is the worthiest aim you can have for the quality 
of your material. If you decide to offer only farce, you 
should choose the best. If you venture into melodrama, 
you should try to select the best. If you turn to the classics, 
you should unfailingly select those which are best as drama. 

The actors to whom you entrust the roles will determine 
the range of your examination. Plays with large casts may 
be debarred in advance. Yet they might be exactly suited 
to schools and colleges, singing societies, church organiza- 
tions, etc. Others with children's roles may fall outside 
your group. A drama may require a certain physical type 
which your personnel does not include. You had better not 
attempt it, then, at the risk of miscasting a part. Ama- 
teurs and professional directors do make glaring errors in 
casting dramas, but avoid doing it, if you can. A play may 
not interest the performers. This is fatal for amateurs. 
Professionals will work with material when they are not en- 
thusiastic about it. But amateurs, to be successful, must be 
congenial in their roles. In amateur organizations casts 
have unanimously decided to return a play to the director, 
asking to be excused from performing in it. In other cases, 
individuals relinquish roles, so that some thirty persons 
may attend rehearsals before five roles are cast. Even at- 
tempting to impose a fine upon a member who cannot pre- 
sent a valid excuse for avoiding or relinquishing assign- 
ment of a role cannot successfully counteract this. 

Likewise, the stage you use will eliminate certain plays. 
This consideration is not so important as it used to be, for 



3 o PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

modern stagecraft has shown almost unbelievable effects 
upon small and simple stages. 

Last of all, the audience must be considered. There is a 
tendency among some little theater enthusiasts to pretend 
that audiences can be totally disregarded. In some cases 
they may be, but the general practice is to present plays 
before audiences. Even the most intellectual or novel good 
plays should attract people who respond to their dramatic 
effects. A comedy which interests may be more stimulating 
than a Greek tragedy which bores both performers and 
audience. It is true that not the entire public of the com- 
munity need be appealed to or considered, but a theater, 
to be even artistically successful, must find, attract, and 
hold its audience. This is generally accomplished by a 
gradual process of elimination and accretion, based on the 
inducing of a rapport between the stage and the house. 

An amateur group which starts to build up a producing 
company should attempt at the same time to develop an 
appreciative audience, unless it exists already. Experi- 
mental societies will do well to follow the methods of their 
successful predecessors. Perhaps the best known organiza- 
tion of this kind was the Washington Square Players of 
New York. Novelties they gave by dozens. Yet the man- 
aging directors appear to have been careful never to repel 
their audiences. The bold, the bizarre, the startling, the 
advanced, was always " carried " by surrounding material, 
the effect of which could be predicted with certainty. By 
careful study and adjustment, this company was able to 
move its audience from the Washington Square district to 
a remote East Side theater on Fifty-Seventh Street, then to 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 31 

the professional Comedy Theater. While the two organiza- 
tions are not the same, it may be said that the successor 
to the Washington Square Players is the Theater Guild. 
This well-conceived body makes no pretense to catering to 
the large, indiscriminate, transient, theater-patronizing 
hordes of people in New York. Its hope was not to attract 
the public, but a public — a public its sponsors were con- 
vinced must exist in a city drawing its theater patrons from 
some ten million persons. It fortunately did not have to 
wait long before this interested patronage was consolidated. 
Not all its plays have followed the same standard, but it 
has not alienated its regular audiences, nor will it. The 
future will strengthen its influence for good drama in 
America. 

On the other hand, many failures may be explained by 
an adherence to a principle the opposite of this. A signal 
failure and retirement from one city of what had promised 
to become a permanent and flourishing center of good un- 
usual drama are attributed to a determined effort on the 
part of the director* to force upon the public what it mani- 
festly did not want. He was over-enthusiastic about Greek 
tragedy. The people he needed in his audience unmis- 
takably indicated that they were satisfied with a small 
dose of such fare. The audience dwindled. The company 
disbanded. The director departed. 

As a summary of the preceding, it may be stated as a 
general rule that, taking into consideration the physical 
limitations of your stage, the dramatic ability of your ac- 
tors, and the compositions of authors, you should choose 
only the best plays. 



32 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

The second question which will arise is, " Shall we pro- 
duce full-length plays, or one-act plays? " 

Full-length plays have certain advantages. They tell 
fully-developed and rounded-off stories. They have a sig- 
nificance because of their length. They give chances for 
real character delineation by the performers. They offer 
opportunities for more different kinds of characters. The 
actors have more changes of moods, more reactions to por- 
tray. As many full-length plays are set in one place, or 
in two different places, they may be easily and adequately 
mounted. Makeshift stage decoration — only too evident to 
the experienced audience — can be avoided by careful plan- 
ning and arranging. If you have to provide your own 
scenery you might find the three or four sets for a bill of 
one-act plays beyond your resources, yet you might be able 
to pay for the one or two sets of a long play. It would be 
perfectly possible to give almost an entire season of long 
plays of which each would require only an easily secured 
interior. 

The greatest advantage of the full-length plays is that 
this is the form most familiar to audiences. People have 
become accustomed to follow drama of this length and pat- 
tern. In offering full-length plays you are not attempting 
any education of the public. You are not required to over- 
come active prejudice or dull inertia. Children prefer long 
plots in connected acts, just as they always like continued 
or long yarns in the nursery. A most successful producer 
of plays for children writes me this fact about the capacity 
audiences of the young who attend his plays. During sev- 
eral seasons he has introduced a few matinees of short 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 33 

plays, always with the confirmation of his experience that 
they are not as successful in appeal as are the longer versions. 
The grown-up theatrical audience is not very different from 
the child audience. It may consider the bill of one-act 
plays too disconnected. It may prefer one long impression 
to a series of short, though strong reactions. It describes 
its feeling as " getting out of the mood of the play." In 
proof of this one need merely recall the introduction of the 
short play into America — its difficulty of securing respect- 
ful attention as a dignified art form even now. 

On the other hand, long plays are sometimes difficult for 
amateurs to interpret satisfactorily because the acting re- 
quires more ability than a fifteen-minute incident does. 
The plot is more complicated. There are more interwoven 
threads of story. The interrelation of characters is more 
subtly evolved. More different kinds of situations are 
built around the central theme. More delicate reactions 
are demanded. As the large effects are cumulative, the de- 
tails contributory to them must be more gradually intensi- 
fied. Events must not move so directly from start to finish. 
There must be more variety in actions. Characters have to 
develop, to change, and this variety of delineation becomes 
an exaction which must be carefully adjusted. In addi- 
tion to this, inexperienced actors may find it difficult to 
li stand up ,7 to the requirements of a role running through 
three or four acts. Acting consumes both nervous and 
physical energy. Amateurs are prone to forget this, yet 
they feel it later when the excitement vanishes and only 
the effects of the strain remain. If the cast enters the con- 
cluding act of a long play with no vigor, their efforts will 



34 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

likely fall flat just when they should be most stirring. The 
leading roles must be particularly well cast to balance these 
exacting demands made by a long play. 

While many amateurs cling to the long play, most pro- 
gressive groups have turned to the one-act form. The two 
chief deterrents to its even wider popularity are the expense 
and labor of setting it properly. Most long plays require 
the usual surroundings of everyday life. Theaters and 
halls have such scenery, or can provide it. One-act plays 
make the most startling demands — a lighthouse interior in 
The Keepers of the Light, a Paris Grand Guignol success 
by Autier and Cloquemin, the operating room of a hospital 
in Laughing Gas by Dreiser, a man's heart in The Theater 
of the Soul by Evreinov, the outside of an envelope in Mrs. 
Calhoun by Ben Hecht and Maxwell Bodenheim, a design 
in black and white in Grotesques by Cloyd Head, a portion 
of limitless space in eternity in Beyond by Alice Gersten- 
berg, a mantel-shelf in Manikin and Minikin by Alfred 
Kreymborg, the Gate of Heaven in The Glittering Gate by 
Lord Dunsany, the forecastle of a tramp steamer in In the 
Zone by Eugene O'Neill. As a bill of one-act plays in- 
cludes three or four, the expense of many different settings 
may run high. Yet in making such stage decorations lies 
one of the keenest delights of play producing. 

The lighthouse interior was simply made. A small oc- 
tagonal room showed stone walls. An iron ladder rose from 
the darkness below through a trap towards the rear and 
mounted to the ceiling where it disappeared through 
another opening. A brilliant white glow which flashed at 
regular intervals through this ceiling opening gave a con- 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 35 

vincing effect of the revolving light above while wind, rain, 
and waves yelled outside. 

In Laughing Gas a bare room was supplied with real 
equipment for the reproduction of a hospital operation. 
Manipulation of lights reinforced the changing waves of 
emotion during the action. 

In The Theater of the Soul faces appeared from deep 
darkness into light of varying intensities at different levels. 
The heart was a glowing red space which seemed to pul- 
sate owing to the effect of fluctuating light. Real persons 
appeared in the full light of the foreground. 

White designs cut and applied to black curtains and 
costumes and figures of only black and white appearing 
in white light produced the decorative impression of Gro- 
tesques. 

In Beyond the author states that " the scene suggests 
limitless space and mist and is played behind a curtain of 
gauze." Around the entire stage should be hung a curtain 
of blue, a cyclorama or horizont, stretching high above. 
The uneven effect below, stipulated by the dramatist, can 
easily be made by placing boxes, boards, inclined planes, 
tables, etc., upon the stage, and covering the entire collec- 
tion with canvas falling in folds. By concentrating light 
upon the face of the single character, the effect of limitless 
space could be conveyed to spectators. 

The mantel-shelf may sound difficult, because how can 
the wall between it and the floor be indicated? In one 
production the mantel was built just above stage level. Be- 
hind it a flat yellow wall was placed. Just behind the 
proscenium opening was hung a darker yellow curtain in 



36 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

which a large elliptical opening had been cut. All the light 
was behind this framing curtain. 

The Gate of Heaven should tower high above a few rocks 
upon the stage itself. Behind this gate a blue drop or 
horizont should be hung. Stars may be made by piercing 
small holes in this curtain and throwing a white or yellow 
light upon it from the rear. The base of the gate should 
be above the stage level to suggest limitless space below. 

A wall sloping down towards one corner of the stage with 
rude bunks built against it, a low ceiling, making a shallow 
stage space, would suggest the narrow, cramped forecastle 
of a tramp steamer required by In the Zone. A translucent 
white oblong curtain bordered by opaque black formed the 
envelope in Mrs. Calhoun. The stamp, postmark, and 
written address were painted upon it. Characters stepped 
from the end of the envelope into the forepart of the stage 
and there carried on the action. 

Ingenious designing, slow and careful planning, a knowl- 
edge of how to produce results with simple means will 
bridge many a seeming abyss in amateur producing. 

The second difficulty in offering one-act plays is the usual 
attitude of audiences towards them. In spite of the years 
during which good, bad, and impossible short plays have 
been offered in vaudeville, and the great vogue of this short 
form on the European continent, American audiences have 
to be trained to respond heartily to them. The Princess 
Theater in New York, which advertised a few years ago 
that no one under twenty-one would be admitted, could not 
remain open with one-act bills, even with that spur to 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 37 

curiosity. Other instances of the same kind could be ad- 
duced. Although the Theater Guild of New York fell heir 
to the audiences of the Washington Square Players and 
several of their performers, it did not pursue the previous 
policy of bills of one-acts, but has from the very first 
staged full-length dramas. Yet there are noticeable al- 
ready some results of the activities of little theater groups. 
People are being educated to appreciate one-act plays as a 
worthy form of drama. 

Reasons for choosing one-act plays greatly outweigh the 
reasons against them. In the first place, most of the great- 
est dramatists have produced remarkable material in this 
form. Most consistent creators of drama in Europe have 
at some time conceived and written short plays. Without 
any effort a general reader can jot down a long list of 
names: — Andreev, Barrie, Benavente, D'Annunzio, De 
Musset, Dunsany, Evreinov, France, Giacosa, Gregory, 
Hankin, Houghton, Jones, Maeterlinck, Masefield, Schnitz- 
ler, Shaw, Strindberg, Sudermann, Sutro, Symons, Synge, 
Tchekoff, Wilde, Yeats. The list of Americans would con- 
tain quite as many names, although because of the dif- 
ferent status of the short form with us, there would occur 
not so large a representation of our best known dramatic 
writers. Such authors as just listed alone would lead to 
production of their one-act dramas. There are additional 
inducements. One-act plays are usually easy for the per- 
formers. They do not require any great changes or de- 
velopments of character delineation. They make keen 
appeals, all the more poignant because short. They usually 



38 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

require only small casts, making easy the choice of actors, 
and the progress of rehearsals. They are amateur material 
par excellence. 

The most alluring feature, of short plays is the character- 
istic already cited as a probable difficulty — the demands 
of their stage settings. They offer the widest scope for 
originality, for novelty, for ingenuity, for beauty. They 
provide the experimental material, in which a falling short 
is not a heinous crime, but in which a signal success may 
reform or revolutionize stage production to such a degree 
that it may reach even the professional stage. Naturally, 
a beginning organization, acting before a tolerant audience, 
will have to be careful not to introduce too many startling 
effects. But every performance can step more and more de- 
cidedly along the newer paths to entire originality of theme 
and treatment. Thus, if the audience is not at the begin- 
ning prepared for novel methods, the productions, always 
keeping in advance but never losing sympathetic contact, 
can lead on to pantomime, to spoken lines without action, 
to so-called static drama in which the idea alone progresses, 
to characters playing in zones of different colored lights, 
to draped stages, to stylization, to conventionalized sets, to 
silhouetting the actors, and all the other attractive experi- 
mental newer methods. 

Of the choice of plays themselves, the guiding principle 
should be variety. The list of kinds of plays is as long 
today as it was when Polonius tried to tell to Hamlet the 
sorts offered by the traveling players. Drama, tragedy, 
comedy, melodrama, farce, fantasy, classic, poem-mime, 
legitimate, satire, burlesque, allegory, spectacle, parody, 








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Photographs by Jessie Tarbox Beals 

The Emperor Jones, by Eugene O'Neill, Provincetown 
Theater, New York. 




Photographs hy Kajiwara 

The Artists' Guild, Saint Louis. Plays by Lord 

Dunsany. 

Above : Tents of the Arabs. Designed by Irving 

Pichel and Harlan Frazer. 



Below: A Good Bargain. Designed by Lawrence 
Ewald. This play was written especially for this 
organization. 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 39 

problem, farce-comedy, vaudeville, comedietta, interlude, 
extravaganza, burletta, harlequinade, tragi-comedy, curtain- 
raiser, pantomime, proverbe, mumming, masque, mono- 
drama, juvenile; the enumeration may be extended even 
further. 

Learn to know quickly when you have chosen the wrong 
kind. Learn — and this is more important — exactly why it 
is inappropriate. Of the countless factors which enter into 
the impression made by a performance you should be able 
to seize at once the operative detractive cause, so that in 
all future attempts that one may be eliminated. Judge all 
later possibilities from past experiences. 

Never offend the sensibilities of your audience. A pro- 
fessional producer might decide to risk a performance 
which will stir up antagonism, although I never heard of 
one who did, but he is offering a thing for public patronage. 
People need no more attend his theater than they need 
smoke a certain brand of poor cigarette. If he is an acute 
commercial manager he will soon change his plan of ap- 
proaching the public or his theater will cease to be a pay- 
ing investment, and some one else will be using his stage. 
But in amateur dramatics there should be — there always is 
— a different relation between performers and audience. 
When you have seen your audience display respectful bore- 
dom because you are enthusiastically offering a second 
Greek drama, do not doggedly set your teeth and utter, 
" Greek tragedy is good for them; — they've got to like it! " 
Try to appreciate the fact that all kinds of people com- 
pose theatrical audiences. Indifference to acted classic 
drama is not in itself a sign of ignorance. The variety 



40 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

simply does not elicit the wide response of other forms. 
Of course antique plays can be made beautiful. Some of 
them present stories of universal significance, yet these are 
rather few. The most scholarly persons, who know the 
conditions of original presentation in the great open air 
under the brilliant sunlight and azure skies of Greece, are 
just as likely as the non-classicist to resent the restriction 
of a great old tragedy to a cramped interior stage tinted 
with electric light. Don't force a long series of Irish one- 
act plays upon them. While many plays written under the 
impetus of the Irish Renaissance are worth producing, 
there are others with no appeal outside the Abbey Theater, 
and if we may believe some of the interested members of 
that group itself, with not much appeal to audiences in that 
building. Intention does not mean achievement in dra- 
matics. A few of the Irish farces and comedies are laugh- 
able. Some of the dramas are ingenuous rather than in- 
genious, while not a few of the attempted poetic dramas 
are misty rather than mysterious. Don't make audiences 
sit through too many costumed romances. Don't give a 
long series of situations depicting the down-trodden labor- 
ing man. Spare the triangle, whether right-angled or any 
other kind. Learn to build up a bill or a season as the 
careful leader of a symphony orchestra arranges either a 
single program or a series of successive concerts. Intel- 
lectual relief does not mean a sinking below the level of 
your audience and your own ideals. Many a laugh-pro- 
voking comedy is as stimulating intellectually as a preach- 
ing problem play. 

Study the programs of successful organizations, the plans 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 41 

of their seasons. Specimen illustrations of several of these 
are reproduced and discussed in the next chapter. At times 
directors attempt plebiscites of their audiences, requesting 
them at the end of a season to indicate on a blank form 
their first choices of the best bill, the best single play, the 
best produced, the best acted. While such schemes are 
excellent in principle, the returns are disappointingly few 
in proportion to the size of audiences. The most famous 
one-act theater in the world, the Grand Guignol of Paris, 
makes up its bills of six short plays of three trls leste, as 
the Parisians say, that is, three " shockers," and three hor- 
rors. Reference has already been made to a bill of sure 
effects to " carry " the bizarre novelty or the startling ex- 
periment. As performers and audience grow in accord, the 
productions should show decided advances in quality of 
material and originality of treatment. If your audiences 
become theater trained — for people can be educated in dra- 
matic exactly as they can be in musical appreciation — 
you may try anything. But never lose sight of the prin- 
ciple of variety and relief. Even when the bill is announced 
as Plays from the Italian there should be no two closely 
similar. An evening might include the passionate drama of 
the Middle Ages, The Dream of an Autumn Sunset by 
D'Annunzio, the poetic Game of Chess by Giacosa, and 
the scandalous but laughable Honorable Lover by Bracco. 
An Irish bill could secure variety by including a symbolic 
poem by Yeats, a farce-comedy by Synge, a genre study 
by Lady Gregory, and a satire by G. Bernard Shaw. Even 
a bill of " lover " plays could be varied, for it could 
range from the delicate exaggeration of The Constant 



42 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Lover by St. John Hankin to the realistic bitingness of 
The Magnanimous Lover by St. John Ervine. A program 
of plays with " unspoken lines " might be announced. This 
phrase, perhaps, does not clearly indicate the kind of thing 
it attempts to describe, but illustration will make this 
clear. There are some — though not many — interesting 
novelties in which the lines are not actual speeches deliv- 
ered by the characters, but their thoughts, their feelings, 
their hardly conscious sentiments. Tragedy could be found 
for this in Evreinov's Theater of the Soul which displays 
the confused feelings and thoughts of a man in the few 
seconds before he shoots himself. For contrast the next 
might be the satirical series of impressions by H. L. 
Mencken entitled The Artist. This shows the thoughts of 
the usual group at an afternoon piano recital, including 
the janitor and the artist himself. More piquancy is added 
by the necessity of making the audience part of the mise- 
en-scene. This is screamingly funny. Other varieties are 
not so easy to find, but a good balance can be secured by 
inserting Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones which includes 
both spoken words by the two women characters — the over- 
tones — and their real natures who deliver their actual 
thoughts covered by the speeches of ordinary conversation. 
Three plays on the same theme, with entirely different 
treatments, would constitute a novel arrangement. I am in- 
formed of one single set made to illustrate the principle 
here suggested. The author chose the frequently exploited 
theme of " the woman unjustly suspected," then worked it 
out in farce, comedy, and tragedy. Up to a certain point 
all three plays are exactly alike; with the appearance of 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 43 

the motivating force the divergences begin. You could 
even secure variety by repeating one act from a Shakespeare 
drama in several different manners — Elizabethan, the usual 
way, in the modern style, etc. The best method for such an 
experiment would be for the various directors to agree upon 
the schemes they would follow. If possible the performers 
should be kept in ignorance of everything except their own 
interpretations. Even the scenery should not be displayed 
until the dress rehearsal, and if practicable, each cast should 
be rehearsed at a different time to prevent any one from 
absorbing another's delivery or stage business. One pro- 
ducer could merely ask the local costumer to supply cos- 
tumes for the scene, accepting anything he sent. A second 
might reproduce some famous artist's designs, as those of 
Boutet de Monvel or By am Shaw. The third might take 
a hint from the Russian school of art directors, or from 
such strange models as Granville Barker's colorful and ani- 
mated Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
In Petrograd, Evreinov gave the first act of The Inspector- 
General several times in one evening in the different styles 
of modern stage methods. He imitated the systems of the 
Moscow Art Theater, of Gordon Craig, etc., parodying the 
efforts of fanatics who want to make of the theater some- 
thing new and strange. Such a performance might not at- 
tract a large general audience, but it should be an instruc- 
tive and stimulating kind of work for a little theater or 
amateur acting group. 

As you learn more and more about material for amateur 
acting you will feel the temptation growing stronger and 
stronger to devote more care and energy to production. This 



44 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

side of amateur production has been developed more than 
any other. Of course acting has changed and amateurs are 
reflecting the better methods of the realistic manner. Yet 
acting Is not so easy to transmit by the printed page. No 
difference in equipment is needed to change acting. A new 
stage setting is a picture which can be perpetuated in 
photograph and illustration. It can be seen by the entire 
world. To judge acting every person must sit through a 
performance. And to see some of the best acting one some- 
times has to sit through the worst plays. A case to illus- 
trate this is the American tour of The Lodger, an unin- 
teresting play by Vachell which contained two such finished 
performers as Beryl Mercer and Lionel Atwell, now fully 
established among the notables of our professional drama. 
Books and magazines have emphasized the artistic, 
scenic, lighting, costume, phases of plays. During the last 
ten years, floods of material relating to such topics have 
nearly swamped the student. Professional dressmakers, 
reputed artists, famous architects, have been lured into par- 
ticipation, and in many instances, advertisement. Skilful 
publicity has achieved its usual result with the American 
populace — it is well acquainted with all the names and 
descriptions, although it may never have seen the actual 
thing. So we glibly discuss horizonts, cycloramas, indirect 
lighting, For tuny banners, Reinhardt's circus methods, plat- 
form and revolving stages, without realizing at all the in- 
superable impracticability of most of them for limited 
stages and incomes. Some of the mistakes perpetrated 
under unintelligent enthusiasm have been more costly in 
effort than in mere money. One well-known book on mod- 



CHOOSING THE PLAY 45 

em aspects of the theater contains discussions of everything 
except the acting! It is only just to add that many of the 
attempts have resulted in significant results and advance. 
Up to a certain point this striving for decorative or stylistic 
effect is laudable, for as acting is the most difficult of all 
the arts, it is in methods of production that amateurs can do 
most. But remember always as a corrective to this that 
" the play's the thing." Never kill a good play by over- 
production. Never slight the first requisite of dramatics — 
good acting. 

In order to choose wisely you must know many plays. 
The best way to become thoroughly acquainted with a play 
is to see it acted. For amateur plays this is, in most cases, 
manifestly impossible. You must read plays. Your fellow 
actors and even non-acting associates must read plays. For- 
tunately the best plays — full-length and one-act — are now 
fairly accessible in print. Read announcements and notices 
of all things dramatic. Attend as many performances as 
you can. Above all, keep lists and notes of all plays you 
consider in the slightest degree possible for production by 
your organization. 

The foregoing may appear a great deal to consider in a 
matter which may seem to be merely a preliminary, but any 
director will tell you that when a play has been rightly 
selected and properly cast, the longest step has been taken 
towards its successful performance. 



CHAPTER IV 
SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 

In order to secure enough material from which to make 
intelligent choice of single plays to include in a program 
or a season, the direction was given to study the announce- 
ments and lists of other organizations, especially the most 
successful. In doing this, a beginning director should not 
be content with merely glancing at a group of titles, and 
deciding that certain dramas made deep impressions upon 
previous audiences, therefore they will be well suited to 
his. This is seldom the case. It was never made so clear 
to me before as it was during talks with the director of 
the British Arts League of Service, a unique organization 
which, by means of lorries, takes bills of one-act plays to 
small towns, villages, and out-of-the-way places where 
otherwise regular drama would never penetrate. Dealing 
almost entirely with persons who have never been theater 
trained, the director has to choose the plays most carefully. 
That such a delicate adjustment can be made is indicated 
by a recent tour of six weeks made by this troupe with one 
or two performances every day. 

It will not be enough, therefore, that the director merely 
inspect the arrangement and titles of the offerings of other 
organizations — he must try to extract or deduce the prin- 
ciples underlying the choice and order. To accomplish this 
with most certainty he should know audiences as well as 

46 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 47 

plays, but failing of omniscience he must approximate as 
well as he can. Though he may learn keenness of judg- 
ment from the best commercial choosers in the world, he 
must constantly temper that knowledge by the active cor- 
rective that most amateur productions strive for upward 
stimulations, increased alertness, and dramatic advance, as 
well as justifiable entertainment, whereas any professional 
or commercial attempt ends with the realization of ade- 
quate diversion and large profits. 

I recall that an orchestra director once told me that the 
place for a symphony on an evening's program was first, 
immediately after the members of the audience have come 
in from the streets, and while their minds and tempera- 
ments are still open, fresh, and unprejudiced. Yet in ac- 
tual arrangements I have not seen that principle followed 
in many concerts. Granting that such an order might be 
a good one for music, one must declare that it would hardly 
produce the keenest satisfaction in a succession of short 
plays. 

The most helpful procedure for considering this extremely 
important problem which confronts directors at all times 
is to examine a few programs — first of single bills of short 
plays, then of entire seasons, comment upon them, and 
finally, try to enunciate a few guiding principles which 
have been followed, and which may serve again. 

Let us look first at this bill of individually excellent 
plays: — The Drawback by Maurice Baring, Augustus in 
Search of a Father by Harold Chapin, Joint Owners in 
Spain by Alice Brown, Her Tongue by Henry Arthur 
Jones. Every one of these is a good play, and could be 



48 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

done with remarkably good effect if well produced. The 
first is a mere dialogue between a youth and a maiden in 
which by persistent and insistent questioning she discovers 
a slight impediment to their marriage. It is delightfully 
and decidedly English. So too is the next, in which an 
old street watchman talks to his graceless son returned 
from America, without discovering the night prowler's 
identity. Perhaps to balance the all-male cast of this, 
Joint Owners in Spain followed. Here in quaint and de- 
lightful fashion, two inmates of an old woman's home ar- 
range life on an attractive basis, in spite of past tempers 
and present irritations. Her Tongue veers very close to 
farce. A wealthy English planter back from Argentine 
believes his friend has found a nice quiet wife for him, but 
discovers what the title of the play indicates. 

Evidently, since Joint Owners has proved to be what is 
expressively described as " sure-fire " or " fool-proof " it 
was placed at what by common consent is designated as the 
best place, the high point of the bill. The last offering is 
intended to send the audience home in a satisfied, good 
humor. The unusualness of the material in the first, re- 
inforced by the charm of the girl, and emphasized by the 
helpless predicament of the youth, was to arrest the scat- 
tered interest. The second play, with its suggestion of 
serious pathos, was to benefit by the contrast. All these 
considerations were present in the mind of the director or 
committee. Centering our thought upon the psychology of 
the theater audience, we are conscious of this query: — Is 
there enough contrast in this bill to hold attention, to pro- 
duce a heightened effect, to build up to a climax? Notice 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 49 

that there is not once a decidedly picturesque appeal to the 
eye, to the sense of sight. There is no inclusion of the 
romantic, the poetic, the suggestive, the deeply imagina- 
tive, the extravagant, the stimulating. All the settings are 
modern, and rather ordinary. The characters are like us. 
The costumes are those of today. The situations are not 
extremely unusual. There are no heightened effects. No 
single play stands out as especially significant in material 
or treatment. Such a combination always is likely to pro- 
duce an impression of drab monotony upon the audience. 
Each play, considered separately, is a good play. Each 
play, presented with such companions, suffers from fellow- 
ship with them. 

Frequently the laudable effort to secure contrast or 
variety o'erleaps itself and falls on the other side. To 
correct this, the director or committee must consider care- 
fully the tastes and feelings of the audience. In a bill of 
three one-acts presented in a small open-air theater to re- 
fined people of much theater experience, one play dealt 
with a probable unseen source of thoughts which may sway 
the lives of individuals, while the second was a tried and 
proven success, an actable burlesque of modern play- 
writing. So far the offerings provided mystery and broad 
satire. Assuredly what the bill needed was some brilliant 
spectacular or poetically imaginative appeal. Yet the bill 
opened with a French farce, The Sponge Cure, described 
on the programs as "another rattling, ridiculous romp." 
As its water-throwing, slap-stick pushing and mawling pro- 
gressed one could see the disgusted spectators curling up 
around the edges at its coarseness and inappropriateness. 



50 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Of course, the directors, being wise, replaced it immediately. 

A program from a different city opened with Aren't They 
Wonders'? by Charles F. Nirdlinger. While this is not re- 
markable for anything it will pass for a first place item. 
The second place was given to Bushido (also known as 
Matsuo) by Takeda Izumo, first made famous by the pic- 
turesque production of the Washington Square Players. 
The striking variety of these two plays made the choice 
of a concluding item delicately difficult. It might have 
been better to delay Bushido until last, placing just before 
it some markedly realistic modern " shocker " or daring 
novelty. Bushido would inevitably lift the evening above 
the ordinary level. There was great risk of a sudden drop 
after it. The jolt was administered to the tensed sensi- 
bilities by Choosing a Career by G. A. de Caillavet, a rough 
and tumble situation of mistaking an interloper for a 
vigorous masseur. For a jollification at a convention of 
druggists, no one would object to such a farce, although 
even for such an occasion it is not nearly so funny as the 
scene in the osteopath's office presented in the Follies a 
few years back. But for an audience who had just been 
stirred by the combination of all the dramatic and theatric 
elements of Bushido, this insignificant conclusion was com- 
pletely outside the tone, the mood, the spirit of the evening. 

It is true that in many instances the quality of the acting 
or the appeal of the stage picture will restore the balance 
disturbed by injudicious choice or mistaken order. Quite 
as frequently the opposite will spoil all anticipations, and 
what was chosen and placed to be the strongest part of the 
program, drops far below the general level. The first half 




Photograph (g) Hugh Thomas 




Above: The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay. This set- 
ting, designed by C. Lovat Fraser for the Lyric 
Theater, Hammersmith, London, was reproduced 
for the United States. It represents exteriors as 
well as interiors. 

Below: The Rivals, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 51 

of the following four component parts to be considered here 
promised a rising scale. The first short play, The Idol, by 
P. B. Corneau, presented a fateful, poetic theme of remote 
India, in which princes are doomed to become warriors and 
rulers, instead of being allowed to become the poets and 
priests they would prefer to be. Quietly, slowly acted in 
the shadow of the great idol, it induced attention and sym- 
pathy in the audience. The second item might at first 
glance appear to carry on merely the same feelings, and 
doubtless many thought so as they read of The Prodigal Son 
by Harry Kemp, " sometime before the beginning of the 
Christian era, on a hill town in Galilee." All the force of 
contrast burst forth in startling surprise as the situation 
rapidly developed into an extravagant satire, parody, and 
burlesque of all things in general. Running the risk of 
shocking the sensibilities of a few, this skit, in this bill 
provided an excellent contrast. In parenthesis, it also is a 
contribution on the side wherein little theaters show their 
greatest lack, the less drab, serious, lugubrious mediums. 
Evidently in this program the strongest impression was to 
be made by Barbara by K. S. Goodman. This trifle pur- 
ports to be a burlesque on the crook motives still popular 
on all stages. By bad acting and inadequate production 
this became a tedious bore, so that the palm of the evening 
was captured by the last drama, Their Country by N. M. 
Kahn and M. Leishin. It would be a mistake to include 
this in many bills now, for it showed a war detail no longer 
of wide appeal. By timeliness and perfection of delineation 
in most of the roles, it was lifted far above the general 
level of the evening. A Jewish father and mother, who have 



52 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

been opposing the efforts of their son to enlist as a soldier, 
are brought by the headline in the newspaper of the cap- 
ture of Jerusalem to the astounding realization that 
through " their country " the world struggle concerns them 
nearly. 

The best series of one-act bills to study is that of the 
Washington Square Players. Through all their varying 
fortunes they provided valuable examples of what to do 
and how to do it. Their selections are better for investiga- 
tion than those of other organizations because they acted 
so many plays already available in print, or shortly after 
published. Many newer and supposedly more original 
groups confine themselves so closely to absolutely new crea- 
tions that the material is for a long time in typoscript, and 
therefore only secured by the distant producer with much 
difficulty, effort, and expense. One of the worthiest rules 
the Washington Square Players followed was to build a 
program so carefully that most of it carried the uncertain, 
the startling, the outre. Every plan for either a single 
evening or a long season should be based upon this. Sec- 
ondly, variety was never forgotten. If the themes them- 
selves did not offer the variety, treatment to provide it was 
evolved. One or two bills will illustrate these statements. 

A program of " Comedies of Nations " was arranged. 
Out of the countless possibilities these four were chosen: — 
Austrian — Literature by Arthur Schnitzler, American — 
Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg, Italian — The Honorable 
Lover by Roberto Bracco, French — Whims by Alfred de 
Musset. 

In spite of some quite serious mistreatments in the actual 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 53 

production, this was an excellent selection. Here are the 
faults plainly stated. The translator or producer of the 
first play, Literature, brutally and inexcusably changed 
material and situation until the play was not only quite 
different from its original, but it lost its final point and 
effect entirely. The violation of the text can be indicated 
without detailing the material. In the original all of the 
characters are on stage at the final line, which is sar- 
donically delivered by the novelist. As here acted only the 
Baron and his mistress were on the stage: — the novelist 
had been allowed to drift off at some indeterminate time 
much earlier. This butchery of the play you will compre- 
hend if you read the translation in Comedies of Words. 
The reputation and success of Overtones are too well-known 
to need any comment here. It was undoubtedly felt that 
The Honorable Lover might be caviare to the general un- 
less the daringness of its theme and ideas was carried be- 
yond the realm of the realistic. Setting, speed, mode of 
interpretation were exaggerated until a spectator was car- 
ried away by the verve of the ensemble and forgot entirely 
such usual matters as everyday marital contracts. To the 
great credit of the organization it must be said that this 
production induced in audiences just that receptivity de- 
clared by Charles Lamb to be the only proper mood for 
appreciating the scandalous artificial comedy of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. 

The unusualness of Overtones, the shocks of The Hon- 
orable Lover made most welcome the exaggerated precious 
sentimentality of the last — which might much better have 
been called Caprice in English as it is in French. Again 



54 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the telescoped adaptation was as little like the original as 
the acting was like that of the de Musset pieces at the 
Comedie Francaise, but the trifle was exquisitely sur- 
rounded, the costumes evoked the past, and the daintiness 
of the dancer, Lydia Lopokova, made up for the discarded 
elements, because these did not impair, as did the changes 
in Literature, the mild but charming dramatic effect of the 
little play. 

Another bill of this same group will further illustrate the 
principles already -laid down. Trifles, by Susan Glaspell was 
produced as convincingly as though the scene were being 
lived before your eyes. With a welcome rebound from the 
cold stark middle West, Another Way Out, by Lawrence 
Langner poked fun at one of the Greenwich Village menages. 
It may have been scandalous, but in a New York theater 
it was so funny that no one cared. I have seen this same 
play produced far from New York by directors who know- 
ing little of the original milieu have by a too marked striv- 
ing after effect in the costumes cheapened and lowered the 
tone of the entire play. Bushido not only harrowed the 
emotions, as did Trifles, it added all the romantic connota- 
tion of old Japan; and it also lured the eye by its colorful 
and brilliant costumes. From this tragedy the recoil was 
bound to be to extravagant farce. This was provided in 
Altruism by Karl Ettinger, in which the dazzling yellow 
sun on the red and white striped awning over the cafe on 
the Seine quay prepared for the startling rapidity of the 
afternoon in the life of a Parisian beggar who, when his 
day is done, turns down his ragged trousers, buttons his 




Photograph by Niauette 




Photograph by Eric Stahlberg 



False Gods, by Eugene Brieux, Smith College, North- 
ampton. First production in America. 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 55 

shirt collar, dons his fashionable coat, reclaims his cane, 
calls his taxicab, and rolls away. 

This order illustrates the principle of contrast or variety. 
The next will show that and in addition the careful pro- 
vision that each part of a bill shall reinforce and help 
" carry " all the other portions. 

When the Washington Square Plays were sent on tour 
many of the New York successes had to be discarded. 
Recognition of differences in audiences dictated that elimi- 
nation. Some were retained because of the renown they 
had spread. Costumes, it was known, would help others. 
Contemporary allusions would make others timely. In one 
city the following evening of five one-acts made up the 
entertainment. 

The audience was attracted first by In April by Rose 
Pastor Stokes. So simple, direct, and pathetic was the 
appeal of this scene that every listener was won to sym- 
pathetic attention. No attempt was made to utilize that 
stirred sympathy in the next item. On the contrary, en- 
tirely different emotions were appealed to in The Road- 
house in Arden by Philip Moeller, in which extravagant 
fun is provided by Shakespeare and Bacon around the 
interesting but workaday matter of creating actable plays. 
This skit had all the effect of a colored cartoon. The next 
place — the middle of the program — was filled by the only 
really significant play of the evening, A Miracle of Saint 
Anthony by Maurice Maeterlinck. Here was a treatment 
which might appear at first glance almost sacrilege, but 
which as the action progressed became plainer as the expo- 



56 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

sition by ironic and soberly satiric methods of a deeply 
moving spiritual truth. In it realism and mystery met on 
common ground. In permanency of impression this was 
the climax of the performance. 

The necessary relief from the tenseness of the religious 
homily was provided by Anton TchekofPs A Bear. I be- 
lieve some other play would have served the purpose better, 
but this one requires only three performers in an easily set 
interior. The action is so noisy that it seemed too boister- 
ous for the company and the theater-trained audience. As 
there must be no uncertainty of effect at the end of an eve- 
ning, an assured success must be included. If it could be 
unusual to the point of startling, colorful to the limit of 
dazzling, familiar yet surprising, literary yet including 
timely allusions, farcical to the height of uproariousness, so 
much the better. All these ingredients went into the com- 
position of Philip Moeller's Helena's Husband; every one 
of them impresses some portions of all audiences. 

If more examples of good program planning are desired 
they are afforded by the following, chosen from groups in 
all parts of the United States. 

I. The Florist Shop by Winifred Hawkbridge; senti- 
mental, pathetic comedy with slight plot, admitting of any 
kind of treatment. Joint Owners in Spain. Glory of the 
Morning by Ellery Leonard; a drama of real power with 
American Indian and French settler costumes in forest 
scenery. The Lost Silk Hat by Lord Dunsany; a farcical 
whimsicality with a cast of all men which nicely balances 
the all-women cast of Joint Owners. 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 57 

II. The Girl in the Coffin by Theodore Dreiser; a pow- 
erful drama of modern tragedy in a large mill town. Somber 
but excellent. The Man of Destiny by G. Bernard Shaw; 
comic treatment of Napoleon at twenty-six, on the verge 
of a romantic adventure in Italy, 1796. 

III. The Constant Lover by St. John Hankin; a charm- 
ing dialogue in a woodland setting on the theme that " con- 
stant " does not have to mean " with the same girl." The 
Queen's Enemies by Lord Dunsany; a tragedy of old Egypt 
in a stone chamber below the Nile. In this the costumes 
help much. Master Pierre Patelin; fifteenth century French 
farce, with picturesque settings, extravagant situations, and 
historical novelty. 

IV. Simoon by August Strindberg; a passionate tragedy 
in a marabout during a sandstorm. His Widow's Hus- 
band by Jacinto Benavente; a modern comedy of an ex- 
travagant — but possible — after-effect of a life. Pierrot and 
the Widow by Olin Williams and Marie Barrett, a pan- 
tomime. 

V. Lonesome-Like by Harold Brighouse; a bit of Lan- 
cashire sentiment. The Marriage Will Not Take Place by 
Alfred Sutro; a dialogue of English society. In the Zone 
by Eugene O'Neill; a tense war play of a tramp steamer 
forecastle. Everybody's Husband by Gilbert Cannan; deli- 
cate fantasy of the dreams of a girl the night before her 
wedding; variations on the theme, "all husbands are just 
alike." 



58 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

VI. Over the Hills by John Palmer; a comedy of the 
call of the open road which reaches a sedentary husband. 
Circles by George Middleton; a problem of the marital 
relationship as it affects the second generation. The Dark 
Lady of the Sonnets by G. Bernard Shaw; extravagant 
fooling with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. 

VII. The Maker of Dreams by Oliphant Down; dainty 
Pierrot costume fancy. The Dumb Cake by Arthur Mor- 
rison and Richard Pryce; pathetic sentiment in a London 
areaway. A Night at an Inn by Lord Dunsany; a grip- 
ping tragic combination of realism and supernaturalism 
developed by an all-men cast. 

Before passing on from this topic of selection and ar- 
rangement of one-act bills there is one modifying statement 
to add. Among all unforeseen things theatrical the 
strangest is the change made in anticipations by realization. 
So every principle of good selection and climactic sequence 
ever enunciated is likely to be nullified by the two always 
variable factors of the production — the quality of the act- 
ing, and the audience. Why is it that Why Marry? should 
succeed everywhere in America, yet fail in London? Why 
is it that The "Ruined" Lady should please Londoners, 
yet bore New Yorkers? Why is it that Russians (we are 
told) acclaim The Cherry Orchard & masterpiece, yet every 
performance I have heard reported, or have sat through 
myself, contradicts the rhapsodies of those enthusiasts who 
have never seen a performance? Why did Miss Maude 
Adams, so successful in everything else allow herself to be 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 59 

drawn into so certain a failure as Chanticleer? Why was 
The Jest acclaimed by every American critic, yet coldly 
criticized by so many in London? 

Great acting can frequently raise the effect of an ordi- 
nary play to signal success. Poor acting can destroy even 
a so-called " fool-proof " drama. Any consideration of the 
acting falls outside this present chapter, but the influence 
of the actual impersonators of the roles must always be 
kept in mind while arrangements are being outlined. 

The second factor is one already listed as of great im- 
portance in determining play selection. The danger of 
simply and repeatedly " giving the public what it wants " 
always results in giving the public what some hidebound 
and narrow-minded producer thinks it wants. The oppo- 
site attempt — to make audiences come to a theater to sit 
through only what the manager wants to produce results 
just as fatally. One of two ideals must be followed or com- 
bined — you must find the public for your plays, or you 
must find the plays for your public; — or you may to some 
extent combine them. 

The inclusion of long plays introduces more weightily 
the factor of the acting ability of the company. Although 
it is not an amateur group, the New York Theater Guild 
has that stability, and that policy, and that audience, which 
reflect most nearly the conditions surrounding an amateur 
repertory or community theater. As the kind of play 
changes, and the demands for number, appearance, ability, 
vary, the personnel of the company varies. Here the 
quality of play is decided upon first, then the company 
is recruited to fit it. In most amateur groups the process 



60 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

would have to be reversed. The quality of the acting is 
more or less decided; plays, then, must be chosen to fit it. 

The suitability of any single play is too dependent upon 
local contingencies to be more than broadly hinted at here. 
No one can decide the momentous matter of choosing a 
full-length play unless he knows everything about the act- 
ing group, the director, the stage scenery and equipment, 
the audience, what material has preceded and what will 
follow. 

A couple of lists will indicate how some organizations 
have decided for themselves this matter of sequence in long 
plays. All of these are so well known that no comment is 
necessary. Many of these are particularized to some de- 
gree in the Appendix list of two hundred plays suitable for 
amateurs. 

I. The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen. The 
Learned Ladies by Moliere. The Thunderbolt by A. W. 
Pinero. The Maternal Instinct by Robert Herrick. The 
Passing of the Torch by Paul Hervieu. The Stranger by 
G. Giacosa. The Coffee House by Carlo Goldoni. June 
Madness by Henry K. Webster. 

II. Lady Patricia by Rudolph Besier. The Pigeon by 
John Galsworthy. The Gods of the Mountain by Lord 
Dunsany. Sacred Ground by G. Giacosa. Hedda Gabler 
by Ibsen. 

III. A Woman's Way by Thompson Buchanan. Prunella 
by Laurence Housman. The Truth by Clyde Fitch. Pina- 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 61 

fore by Gilbert and Sullivan. Green Stockings by A. W. E. 
Mason. The Learned Ladies by Moliere. The Importance 
of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. The World and His 
Wife by Jose Echegaray. You Never Can Tell by G. 
Bernard Shaw. Her Husband's Wife by A. E. Thomas. 
Fanny and the Servant Problem by Jerome K. Jerome. 
Mrs. Bumstead-Leigh by H. J. Smith. 

IV. Joy by John Galsworthy. The Playboy of the 
Western World by John M. Synge. An Eye for an Eye by 
I. L. Caragiale. The Golden Apple by Lady Gregory. 

V. The Pigeon by Galsworthy. Magic by G. K. Ches- 
terton. The Cassilis Engagement by St. John Hankin. 
Art and Opportunity by Harold Chapin. The Harle- 
quinade by Calthrop and Barker. Don by Besier. 

The evident means for securing greatest variety at mini- 
mum of effort — at least in planning — is to combine in a 
season both one-act and full-length plays. Regular alterna- 
tion of the two would provide the first plan. This would 
result, not only in relief of interest for the audience, but in 
relief of work for the director. If he could select his long 
plays far enough in advance he would be rather free to 
adopt the most recent productions in the shorter forms. 
Then, too, if he knows how to organize and train assistants 
to whom directing may be delegated safely, he can con- 
centrate on the productions requiring most attention, care, 
and time. With a conscientious corps of willing assistant 
directors he might be able to keep two programs under 



62 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

rehearsal at the same time, devoting the major portion of 
his energies to drilling the actors in the long play. At the 
beginning of rehearsals of the one-act plays he should out- 
line with as little possible chance for misunderstanding his 
methods and ideals. After that the entire process of block- 
ing out the action, rehearsing the lines, building the interest 
should be carried out by the assistants. Before the dress 
rehearsal — as much before as possible — the director him- 
self should assume charge. With his enthusiasm fresh and 
interest unspoiled by the routine of constant repetitions, he 
should be able to produce remarkable effects. As director 
and assistants work in this relation cooperative smoothness 
will develop constantly. Any member of an acting group 
knows how the appearance of a " polisher " or extra coach 
during the last rehearsals will induce a cast to " step-up " — 
if the cast has confidence in him, or if he can show the 
dramatic value of what he is trying to obtain and can 
induce them to follow the technique to secure just those 
results. Details of lacks which he can supply and defects 
which he can correct will be discussed in the chapter on 
rehearsing. 

If it is not practicable to alternate performances of one- 
act with full-length plays, some fortunate combination may 
be built up from the demands and opportunities. Costume 
and fanciful plays often seem to answer exactly to the op- 
portunity, but the season may be young, the returns purely 
speculative, the budget exigent; so that beautiful pic- 
turesqueness may have to be sacrificed to the cruel de- 
mands of common sense. There may be voiced the feeling 
that there have been enough old " classics " and " standi 



SOME SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 63 

bys." But the best modern drama for contrast requires 
too high a royalty, or requires newly-built scenery. Per- 
haps, somewhere in foreign literature can be found a play 
answering to the needs of the audience and material equip- 
ment of the group, which has not been copyrighted in this 
country. Perhaps the variety can be found in some original 
production by a local playright, although from the entering 
wedge of such a selection may come the widening crack 
which will finally, and that rather soon, split the organi- 
zation. An entire season of nothing except original local 
typoscripts would prove to be a deadly bore for any per- 
sons except workshop supporters, all of whom aspire to be 
writers, actors, designers, producers; or unless the superla- 
tive excellence or daring originality of the plays attract a 
general public. Such a season, if one may judge from re- 
ports and opinions, depends for success and permanence 
upon purely local conditions. Many have been started; 
few have survived, unless combined in operation with some 
other principle of selection and arrangement. 



CHAPTER V 
REHEARSING THE PLAY 

After a play has been chosen for presentation, the next 
two important steps are to appoint a director or producer, 
and to select the cast. There are rumors of cooperative 
assemblies in which the ideal is that every one concerned 
shares equally in the responsibility, equally in the work, 
equally in the attainment, equally in the success. It is dif- 
ficult to secure satisfying explanations of such endeavors. 
When an interested questioner asks for facts, he is answered 
with ideals. When he insists on results, he is offered 
prospectuses. When he attends performances, he is assured 
they are merely exercises. There is no doubt that co- 
operative effort can be utilized in dramatic production, but 
so far as I have observed a great deal of this so-termed 
dramatic activity turns out to be playground recreation, 
neighborhood pageantry, laboriously revived folk-dancing, 
spectacular drills and processions, juvenile shows, and mis- 
cellaneous improvisation, which while showing some ele- 
ments utilized also in dramatic entertainment, has as little 
connection with the real art of the theater as fyas Cleopatra's 
Night in a three ring circus with the Lysistrata of Aristo- 
phanes. 

This is not, in any sense, to belittle the worthy endeavor 
of the wide-spreading community movement. To this 

64 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 65 

every element which can contribute should offer its hearty 
support. But there should be a distinction drawn between 
mere recreational pursuits and performed drama. Ballets 
are provided in old-fashioned opera, but no one would seri- 
ously claim that they constitute opera. Nor should any 
one confuse with play production a series of national dances, 
or a historical procession, delightful as active participation 
in these may be. 

There are some attempts in certain amateur groups to 
try to dispose of a director. Armed with some high- 
sounding Utopian pronunciamento about the " democracy 
of the arts " they pretend to believe that a play should be 
the result of a voluntary cooperative association demo- 
cratically working out its own destiny. You can find plans 
and arrangements for such ideal societies in many of the 
books dealing with dramatic activity. Investigation of the 
actual conditions lauded by these books will generally dis- 
close the truth that the most pleasing and successful of 
these real democratic efforts are not dramatic in the strict 
sense, or that the apparently independent workers are in 
all the rehearsing and the producing quite as subservient 
to some directing mind as are the actors of a professional 
theater, or that the results of the system, while doubtlessly^-^^ 
great fun and education for the performers, do not expe- 
ditiously or assuredly move into the production of plays ; 
Enthusiasts are likely to confuse the intention with the 
result, the desire with the ability, the means with the end, 
the struggle with the victory .^These attempts may be ex- 
cellent training schools for later achievements, but it is as 
mistaken to term them successful because of that as it 



66 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

would have been to insist The Lodger was a great play 
because it numbered in its cast two finished performers. 
There are reports of one acting society, at least, which 
actually tries to put such ideas into practice. These ac- 
counts declare that the performances of that group are 
the strangest and the funniest one can imagine, while the 
rehearsals are chaos. Good productions are the result of 
good directing. Efficient directing can make a success of 
probable failure. Misguided or ignorant directing can spoil 
an anticipated success. 

A director's training begins long before he is given his 
first script to put upon the boards. He need not necessarily 
have graduated from either a school of acting or the pro- 
fessional stage. Many of the best directors in the country 
are indifferent or poor actors. The qualities of the two 
interests are entirely different. The actor is able to do cer- 
tain things; the director is able to induce other people to 
do certain things. The latter must know first of all what 
is to be done; he must know secondly, just how it may be 
done; he must be able thirdly, to cause the actor under 
his charge to do that thing in exactly the proper manner 
and at the correct time. 

Leaving aside the questions as to whether a director is 
better for knowing intimately the theater or for being ver- 
dantly free from any of its technical requirements, this 
much is as clear as day, that starting from beautiful igno- 
rance, he will have to absorb and adopt through bitter ex- 
perience a vast number of fundamentals if he ever hopes 
to produce with least effort for greatest success. This state- 





Photographs hy Alioe Boughton 

Bennett School Little Theater, Millbrook, under th. 
direction of Charles Rann Kennedy. 



Above: , Antigone, by Sophocles. 
Below : Setting for The Fool from the Hills, 
Charles Rann Kennedy. 



I.v 





Photographs by Eric Stahlberg 

The Merchant of Venice, Smith College, Northampton. 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 67 

ment of least effort means least effort for the performers, 
not himself only. 

The simplest kind of illustration will suffice for this. Sup- 
pose an enthusiastic — but inexperienced — director is given 
a modern English comedy to produce. It looks easy — it is 
merely regular life transferred to a stage. He may decide 
that the first act should cover thirty minutes; but with no 
appreciation of the simple fact that amateurs can never 
deliver lines as rapidly and tellingly as professionals, he 
starts to rehearse the act as it was written. Early repeti- 
tions will always consume from twice to three times as long 
a period as the finished performance should, so counting 
on the speedy spurt of dress rehearsal he plods his lengthy 
way. Then as the date of presentation approaches he sud- 
denly realizes that his first act is running to forty minutes. 
His cast has been rehearsed at their utmost rapidity; they 
can work no faster if they are to live through the entire 
evening. He may in his heart despise an audience which 
will not sit through his four hour performance, but some 
inklings of common sense tell him he cannot hold them 
until midnight, so he desperately begins to cut right and 
left. His actors cannot unlearn in a day the speeches they 
have been studying for weeks. They are not sure of cuts. 
Their confidence in him vanishes; their confidence in them- 
selves oozes. Passages are deleted at final rehearsals, busi- 
ness is changed, the pace is forced, with the inevitable re- 
sult that at the performance the "reproduction upon the 
stage of actual life" has become a breathless series of 
schoolroom recitations. The first act may go well, but the 



68 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

latter scenes will suffer, for the untried amateurs will have 
exhausted most of their energy, and the play, instead of 
mounting in intensity will sink to a dull level, across which 
it will drag its weary length. 

The thousand and one other little matters of acting effec- 
tively — call them tricks or technique or universal experi- 
ence, as you please — which must be recognized by the di- 
rector, such as turning, shifting the weight to start across 
stage in a graceful manner instead of suggesting a pair of 
scissors, the use of the hands, the much more difficult art 
of not using the feet, the knowledge of how to use one's 
height or how to counteract it, the principle of building 
suspense by quieting the voice and action, the powerful 
effect of pauses, the subdued reaction to emotions, rhythm, 
the unconsciousness of pure comedy, all these he may learn 
in time. But he is an infinitely better director if he begins 
with some appreciation of them and a humble desire to 
learn more, instead of sweeping them aside as beneath him 
or unessential. 

A director must be sensitive to the changing psychology 
of the audiences. He must know of the decided change 
which has come over good acting during the past fifteen 
years. He will, if he really cares for his work, welcome 
the added difficulty of securing results with the modern 
moderate methods. 

The producer's tangible work begins when the copy of 
the play is put into his hands. It should end when the 
curtain rises upon the first performance. This is the ideal 
term, though in long runs he may have to revise for weeks 
until the play is in perfect working order. 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 69 

In certain things a director may be subject to the con- 
trol of a committee, but in the actual development of the 
play from planning to performance he should be in abso- 
lute control. His word should be law. This does not mean 
that he will not be open to suggestion, that he will not 
listen to reason, that he may not be consulted, but it does 
mean that if the play is intrusted to him, the responsibility 
for its conduct must be his. It is merely fair, therefore, 
that all the opportunity should be his. Executive boards 
of acting societies, once they have appointed a director, 
should insist upon compliance with all his plans. Amateurs 
are likely to grow restive under supervision from one of 
their own members; so do professionals. As I write this, 
the call-board of one New York theater bears a notice to 
the company that all directions issued by the stage manager 
are to be obeyed as coming from the office. They are to 
be carried out, though complaints will be heard by the 
officials of the producing company. If persons whose pro- 
fession is acting have to be reminded of such a matter is 
it any wonder that an amateur producer is the marked vic- 
tim of intended murder by nearly every cast he directs? 
One of the proverbs of amateur acting is that the producer 
has no friends. Every man's hand is against him. Even 
the amateur authors whose plays he directs can tell you 
why their offspring were not instantly adopted by the 
public. 

Equipped with an intimate knowledge of how effects are 
secured upon the stage, the producer studies the play to 
determine what effects it demands, and what are the best 
methods of securing them. In addition to his knowledge 



70 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

of sound and legitimate methods of theatrical skill, he 
should have a freshness of attack and a novelty of treat- 
ment to infuse animation and enthusiasm into amateurs 
dealing with plays frequently novel and often even bizarre. 
The producer must serve as active interpreter between the 
page and the actors, and then between the actors and the 
audience. He must know the play better than any single 
performer. He must feel the play as any spectator may. 
He must bring the play from the dramatist to the audience 
by means of the cast upon the stage. 

He must know the value of rhythm within the act as 
well as the progression of climactic interest throughout the 
entire development. He must be able to determine just 
what effects are to be secured and how to induce the indi- 
viduals concerned to produce those effects. In all cases of 
several possible interpretations he must have history, tra- 
dition, common sense, superior impressiveness, consistency 
of character delineation, or quotable authority from the 
text of the play itself, to support his decisions. 

The most frequently cited case of various possible de- 
liveries of a short speech — all good as well as defensible — 
is the pair of words in Macbeth., Lady Macbeth is urging 
her husband to murder his king. 

Macbeth. If we should fail — 

Lady Macbeth. We fail! 

But screw your courage to the sticking-place, 

And we'll not fail. 

How should " we fail " be delivered? 

The Folio of 1623 prints a question mark after it. Mod- 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 71 

era editors are divided upon the punctuation, the inflection, 
the meaning. Mrs. Siddons is reported as having used suc- 
cessively three different intonations. 

When Malvolio in Twelfth Night reads in the letter he 
has found, " If this fall into thy hand, revolve," does the 
last word mean " consider in thy mind," or " spin around 
upon your heels "? This latter is done by most actors in 
attempting to " fatten " an already rich role. 

Modern dramatists are quite careful in indicating inter- 
pretations, but not always do they settle matters. In a re- 
hearsal of Don by Rudolph Besier, a discussion arose as to 
just how the title character was to behave at a certain en- 
trance. The text was scrutinized and finally this detail was 
seized upon. As he entered the room, though the situation 
was a strained one, he saluted his fiancee with the off-hand 
exclamation, " Hullo, Ann." That seemed to indicate that 
he had no appreciation of the terrible mess in which he 
had involved himself, while it did give a clue of detached 
nonchalance to his acting at that point. 

The director must know the value of rhythm within the 
act as well as the progression of climactic interest through- 
out the entire development. In practically no scene does 
the mood, the feeling, the emotion remain unchanged for 
many consecutive minutes. 

It will be easy to illustrate this from a single scene taken 
from Twelfth Ni^ht—the fifth act. Three different sets of 
characters give exhibitions of different kinds of foolery with 
the Clown. Then follows the Duke's indignant charge 
against Antonio for having been a Dirate. This accusation 
the latter as sturdily repudiates, but before the matter can 



72 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

be carried very far Olivia enters and to the absolute con- 
fusion of both Duke and Viola complains against the boy 
for breach of trust until the Duke, perceiving that his cruel 
fair dotes on his servant orders Cesario out to be slain. 
And then with the word " husband " Olivia throws the 
already complicated situation into confusion, for now Viola 
is amazed. Rage at the boy's duplicity sways the Duke 
when he hears the Priest's corroboration of Olivia's claim. 
Yet Shakespeare does not allow this strained and serious 
tenseness to continue long, for in the midst of it, in stum- 
bles Sir Andrew Aguecheek with a broken head, accusing 
the puzzled young Cesario of having beaten him. This 
effect is emphasized immediately by the appearance of Sir 
Toby, also roundly charging the youngster. But before 
any of the characters on the stage or any spectator in the 
audience can recover from such a breathless procession of 
events, on hastens Sebastian with an apology directed at the 
loving but hesitating Olivia. Before these two lovers can 
adjust their interrupted relations, Viola must be satisfied 
concerning Sebastian. In the twinkling of an eye the in- 
terest has swung back to Viola's love for the Duke, yet only 
three speeches are allowed to it, when mention is made of 
Malvolio, who is produced. In the modern versions there 
is always aroused for the misused steward some sentiment 
because the male star plays that role, but that sympathy 
passes as he leaves, and the taunts of the Clown make us 
smile again. The closing speech of the Duke brings back 
a little magnanimity, and the Clown's song ends the 
comedy. 

All these moods occur within the short time of a short 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 73 

act. The audience is never allowed or required to exer- 
cise any one feeling or emotion for more than a very few 
minutes. 

To be impressed with this same principle in compressed 
form analyze for emotion alone Suppressed Desires by 
Susan Glaspell, or In the Zone by Eugene O'Neill, or A 
Night at an Inn by Lord Dunsany. For effective move- 
ment from one mood to another Ibsen's plays provide excel- 
lent examples of graduated change. Used in connection 
with surprise and contrast, this device is one of the most 
powerful of all dramatic elements. 

Rhythmic shading from one mood to another is an essen- 
tial in good producing. 

When the cast becomes proficient in lines and action a 
director may direct them much as a conductor leads 
his orchestra. While the scene is being enacted he may 
give — without interrupting — such directions as " faster," 
" slower," " louder," " pause," " step nearer," " fall back," 
" stronger," " build," " hold it." Such directing comes 
later in rehearsing, when polishing the play, or adding the 
shaded finishing touches, but every one of these orders 
should be anticipated by the director, and held in his mind 
as necessary in the final performance. As many amateurs 
ignorantly believe they are ready for the audience as soon 
as they can romp through the lines without prompting, a 
good director should be able to prove to them how much 
more they need to add to mere memorization and crude 
interpretation before they can consider themselves acting 
at all. 

In anticipating these perfecting details directors may 



74 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

attain their end in two different ways. Some decide upon 
every minutest point and never swerve from a first pro- 
nouncement. These rest on firm adherence to first choices 
and decisions. Others decide the broader lines only, adding 
to the main threads the smaller points. Perhaps the best 
results — for amateurs, at least — depend upon a compro- 
mise between the two, or a combination of them. A wise 
director may go so far as to tell his cast, " If I ask you to 
do something a certain way, please don't tell me I asked 
you to do it differently at previous rehearsals. I may be 
trying various things at nearly all the repetitions, for I 
want to find the best." The cast must not believe that this 
proves lack of comprehension or ability on his part, pro- 
vided any change seems to improve the effect. If he merely 
wastes time and effort in needless vacillation, he had better 
not be entrusted with a script to direct. 

As far as is possible the scenery designs should follow 
the author's descriptions and stipulations. Changes may be 
made, depending upon economy, space, equipment, provided 
no essential requirement of the acting has to be modified or 
deleted. 

So much of the producer's work is preparatory. He has 
been considering merely the text of the play and its mate- 
rial surroundings. Next he must turn his attention to its 
human characters. 

The cast, then, is next to be determined. There are many 
methods of securing good casts. One of the quickest and 
most simple is to appoint the members. A committee may 
do this, and hand the list to the director, or the director 
himself may choose the actors. Such a scheme saves an 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 75 

incalculable amount of time. Another advantage is that it 
places the responsibility upon certain definite individuals. 
This will make the members of the casting committee and 
the director careful of the selections, in order to assure a 
good production. When a committee makes the selections 
the personal judgment of one person is modified by com- 
ment from others. It also results in dividing the respon- 
sibility. Undoubtedly the best method of selecting casts is 
by " try-outs." 

In trying out candidates a producer or a committee 
passes upon the fitness of each one by seeing him act. The 
candidate may offer a portion of the play to be cast, or 
something else acceptable. He may deliver lines from the 
play to be acted. He may take part in a " cast reading " 
in which persons stand about the stage or room and read 
the lines of characters in the play. If there are three or 
four applicants for one part, each is given a chance to act 
some scene. In judging such an exhibition less attention 
should be paid to what he does than what he indicates he 
can do. Performers must always be chosen because of the 
possible development of their latent abilities rather than 
for assured attainments. Iden Payne chose a cast of 
twenty men and women from hearing a large number read 
the prologue to The Drawing of the Sword by Thomas W. 
Stevens. Some were selected because of their bearing, 
looks, manner, voice, size. What they demonstrated they 
could do was more significant than what they did. Every 
professional is being tried out every time he appears upon 
the stage. 

It is reported that when an impersonator of Lincoln was 



76 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

needed for John Drinkwater's play, some one suggested a 
Mr. McGlynn. He was summoned back to New York 
from a road company. The author and he went through 
the scene in Grant's headquarters in which the President 
pardons the boy sentenced to be shot for sleeping on sentry 
duty. At the end of that try-out, Mr. McGlynn was en- 
gaged for the title role. 

There are only two drawbacks to this scheme which is 
the fairest which can be devised for amateurs. It con- 
sumes a great deal of time. The other drawback is this. 
Some member of the organization best fitted to play a role 
may not feel disposed to try for it. Manifestly he should 
be the one selected. But it appears unfair to disregard 
the three or four who have made the effort while he has 
done nothing. Yet every role should be acted in the very 
best manner. For the play's sake, the best actor should be 
assigned the part. A candidate may try for a part for 
which he is not at all suited while he could fill another 
role better than any one who strives to get it. It fre- 
quently occurs, therefore, that the showing of candidates 
in a series of try-outs must be supplemented and corrected 
by personal choices. 

This point of selecting the cast is emphasized here be- 
cause in amateur plays there are likely to be so many 
instances of miscasting. More emphasis is offered by the 
indisputable fact that if a play is well cast its success is 
assured, always presupposing, naturally, that the method of 
directing will not ruin it. The ever-present dangers of 
casting amateur plays must be anticipated from the incep- 
tion of the process. Friendship, social prestige, prejudice, 



t/ 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 77 

previous appearances, willingness to act, desire to shine, all 
these must be reckoned with at this point. In his consid- 
eration the director must reduce them to the minimum, and 
seek for mobility, dependableness, patience, intelligence, 
stage presence, common sense, obedience, fitness, loyalty, 
and endurance. If he is wise he will banish temperament^—**-* 
unless it is over-shadowed by matchless ability. 

Every member of the cast should read the entire play 
in the form it is decided to use. Any cuts should be made 
before certain lines and scenes enter into the performers' 
consciousness. This is essential for amateurs. Some ap- 
parently chance remark in an early conversation may de- 
termine the delineation of a character, or indicate the 
interpretation of an entire later scene. Producers, of 
course, should be able to collect all these points and trans- 
mit them to the actors through directions; but the actors 
should be given the opportunity to accumulate them for 
themselves. At the first meeting the play should be read by 
the cast. General directions should be noted upon the 
copies. The main points to strive for in the scenes, situa- 
tions, lines might be briefly indicated, more as guides in 
study than as acting hints. Matters of age, peculiar char- 
acteristics, lines of comedy, pauses, high lights, should be 
informally discussed. 

The rule just given regarding the complete play is by all 
means the best for amateurs. Even to study a role the com- 
plete version seems the best, yet individuals have their 
peculiar preferences. Many study best by copying their 
parts, using personal contractions and abbreviations. Others 
prefer to recite the lines aloud exactly as they will speak 



78 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

them. Nearly every amateur tests himself by having some 
one hear him recite lines, the second person giving the regu- 
lar speeches of other characters. This device is the best of 
all, as it accustoms the ear to the length and sound of the 
delivered dialogue, and makes the actor feel sure in his re- 
sponses. It unquestionably, in the long run, saves time 
and energy. 

There are some amateurs, perhaps with a slight profes- 
sional experience, and many semi-professionals, who prefer 
to study from a professionally typed " part." This contains 
only the lines of the single role, with the last few words of 
other characters' speeches — just enough to give the cue. 
The advantage of this for studying is merely that it contains 
no more than the part to study. The actor does not have 
to skip about the complete play picking out his own speeches. 
In the second place it gives the learner an exact idea of 
how long his role is, for from the number of small sheets 
he knows how many " sides " (as they are termed profes- 
sionally) he has to master. 

As amateurs are forced to study their roles at odd times, 
they should soon know the easiest and surest method to 
use. People's minds memorize by quite different processes, 
so each performer must learn for himself the workings of 
his own faculty for memorization. 

One stock actress explained her system to me. With a 
knowledge of the entire play, she divided Jier scenes into 
so many situations or moments. Each one of these had 
some kernel, some essence, some point, some crisis, some 
truth to drive home. Around such central themes which 
themselves would suggest what she termed " key words " 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 79 

or " key lines," she would group other important words, 
phrases, and speeches. Thus by a method of memorized 
association she had a succession of important facts and con- 
nected speeches to remember. As she concentrated upon 
these and went over and over them they became indelibly 
fixed in her mind. If she missed a word at times she still 
knew the effect she was working up, and this by association 
would direct the words into the channels associated by 
repetition with that effect. 

By such a method another result was secured — a result 
of prime importance for amateurs to notice. So frequently 
an audience is cognizant that as the play progresses the 
characters are less and less certain of their lines. This is 
naturally the product of our old-fashioned, usual system 
of memorizing. Recall how you yourself memorize a poem 
of six stanzas, and admit that you are always likely to go 
to pieces in the last stanza if you try to repeat it aloud. 
What is the reason? This is it in a single sentence. In 
memorizing you repeated the first stanza six times as often 
as you did the last, the second five times, and so down, until 
a single repetition of the concluding stanza deluded you 
into believing that you knew it. 

The system of memorizing outlined here has this decided 
advantage; — that all portions of the play are memorized 
equally well, and at the same rate. When, after several 
repetitions, the speeches approach perfection, they all ad- 
vance to the same degree. If perfection is reached for any 
one section it marks accurate memorization of the entire 
role. 

At the first real rehearsal it might be a good thing if 



80 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

every performer could be letter-perfect. This is an ideal 
condition never realized by any actors. It is not really so 
necessary, for at this first rehearsal the cast should merely 
walk through their parts, getting ideas of how and when 
to enter and exit; how and when to move about; what 
changes of feeling to indicate; all of which they should care- 
fully write down upon their copies. Then when they memo- 
rize they can pick up all this stage business in connection 
with the lines they speak. Thus the action and the deliv- 
ered word are suited to each other as they should be. This, 
you recall, was one of Shakespeare's cardinal points of good 
acting. 

During first rehearsals the director should interrupt fre- 
quently. It is less difficult to correct an unfit action before 
it becomes spontaneously reflex than after. It is easier, 
then, though difficult at any time, to change a wrong or 
misplaced emphasis. In early rehearsals the most insistent 
care should be given to pronunciation, enunciation, and tone. 
Every person engaged in the delivery of speech should help 
to cast off the harshness and the rasping utterance which 
mark the so-called American voice. Our speech can be 
made beautiful upon the stage. In the hurry of most ama- 
teur productions these elements of beauty and effectiveness 
receive scant attention. This does not mean that all the 
members of a cast should fall into the other fault of talking 
exactly alike. A careful director will prevent this, though 
many play directors seem to induce casts to imitate them. 
In early rehearsals it is easier to get clear ideas of situa- 
tions. At such times when differences of opinion arise be- 
tween director and actor, the latter may be allowed to ex- 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 81 

press his conception, but in the end he must follow the 
director's decision. The latter may be able to explain very 
clearly why he asks for action done his way rather than 
another. If he is a thinking producer he will be able to 
show why his interpretation is correct. If he merely " feels " 
that it should be so, he should examine and analyze to as- 
sure himself. 

The producer should know how to emphasize effects — 
notice, emphasize, not exaggerate. Moderation, not exag- 
geration, is the acme of present-day acting, in large pro- 
fessional companies as well as in intimate little theaters. 
Here are concrete illustrations of the principle underlying 
this theme. In The Angel Intrudes by Floyd Dell a young 
woman about to elope with a young poet really goes off 
with his guardian angel who has intruded to save him from 
this rash exploit. This scene could be played to show that 
the Angel makes every effort he can to win the girl. But 
it is more humorous — as well as carrying out the an- 
nounced disposition of the girl — to have her rapidly trans- 
fer her affection from her earthly lover, and leave his 
apartment to go willingly with this fascinating visitor from 
Heaven. Their departure can point this or neutralize it. 
The Angel opens the door while she is on the opposite side 
of the room. Should he then go across to her, and lead 
her out as an ordinary lover would? Or should he 
wait at the door and let her cross to join him before 
they go out together? The second is so much more in 
the spirit of the play that some would call it almost self- 
evident. 

At the end of the second act of Don by Rudolph Besier 



82 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

news is brought into the drawing-room of an English canon's 
home that the husband of the woman taken away the night 
before by the son of the clergyman has just reached the 
house and is being ushered into the study. Don, the son, 
declares he will go face the husband. As there are reasons 
for fearing that the man has come for revenge, and may 
shoot, the household tries to restrain the boy. Suddenly 
the maid and the boy's father appear. To indicate the 
general confusion they should leave the room door open. 
When the father has ordered his son not to leave that 
room, the canon goes out. By so simple an action as closing 
that open door, as if to shut his son in, the entire point 
of the situation should be emphasized. 

Amateurs are likely to be over-anxious to act in tell- 
ing scenes. It is difficult to make them realize that em- 
phasis may come from absolute quiescence. Pauses are 
more eloquent than speech. Good directing must take note 
of chances for such underlining. A young actress was to 
faint in a play. She did this and the subsequent recovery 
very convincingly, but she continually bothered the direc- 
tor by asking for directions about what she should do. It 
took patient reiteration of detailed explanations to make 
her realize that she must not do anything. She could not 
seem to comprehend the point which could and should be 
made by her relaxed passivity. This instance illustrates 
another prime difficulty of amateur plays. Untrained, un- 
skilled performers find it almost impossible to act when 
they are not saying something, or when they are not in 
the stage center. They allow themselves to pass out of the 
situation. 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 83 

As rehearsals progress there should be fewer and fewer 
interruptions. Changes should be announced before the 
action begins, or at the end of a scene. If possible, these 
alterations should be incorporated immediately by repeti- 
tions. Many amateurs need time to absorb changes. In 
this instance the modifications should become effective at 
the next rehearsal. 

One-act plays should be rehearsed entire. Performers 
should feel the rise of interest and know how to secure it. 
The danger of repeating until the acting becomes a bore 
should be anticipated and avoided. Actors are as likely 
to " grow stale " as athletes are. Continually drumming 
at an effect may be the very worst method in the world for 
securing it. Many people under such treatment are like 
teased animals. Like spirited horses they may be goaded 
too far. I have seen an entire cast in a serious play go 
off on a tangent, become almost hysterical, and rehearse 
as howling farce with peals of laughter the most affecting 
scenes, then reappear at a next rehearsal and go through 
the scene with remarkable improvement. Severity is out 
of place in such ebullitions of group temperament. A wise 
director will doff his dignity and enter into the fun for 
this one occasion. 

Ability to work with human natures in the artificial rela- 
tionships of play casts is usually of more practical value 
to a director than mastery of stagecraft. Stagecraft with- 
out it will carry him nowhere. Much skill in handling 
people coupled with fair stage knowledge will work won- 
ders. Frequent, rather than long, rehearsals should be 
the rule. Familiarity and ability should reach the point 



84 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

where no effect is the result of a lucky chance or fortunate 
circumstance. Anything which merely " happens " is not 
good acting. Any effect should be an assured certainty 
from habitual effort. 

Full-length plays require different treatment by ama- 
teurs. Acts should be rehearsed separately. The first act 
will require the longest time, because in addition to memo- 
rizing lines and working up business, the actors are en- 
deavoring to take on the characters of other persons. The 
school boy acting Monsieur Jourdain is learning how to 
be the silly worshiper of rank. The girl studying Maurya 
in Riders to the Sea is visualizing an Irish mother such as 
she never saw. Girls in a Greek play are trying to walk 
gracefully without heels. The two Dromios in A Comedy 
of Errors are practising grimaces. When the first act is 
ready, the actors will have mastered the characterization, 
so that task diminishes as the rehearsals proceed. 

Every act has its peculiar problems and important re- 
quirements. The first act must arouse the interest of the 
audience. It must impress them as soon as possible. The 
first lines to be spoken are extremely important and cor- 
respondingly difficult. Modern play-writing has almost 
entirely eliminated the first speech by providing that the 
curtain shall rise upon an empty stage, upon action with- 
out lines, or upon a stage picture which will carry over 
some impression before any character need speak a word. 
If the play does not offer such a quiet start, the director 
may contrive it. The director should make plain to speak- 
ers just where the first laugh may be expected, just where 
the first telling impression should be made. In these days 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 85 

of moderate, realistic acting, amateurs are finding it more 
and more difficult to secure their effects. This entails all 
the more careful preparation in acting. 

Middle acts must be rehearsed to rise above the first. 
The supreme importance of the middle of a play is exem- 
plified by the title of Mr. Hopkins's book, How's Your 
Second Act? Intensity and complication must be reflected 
in rehearsals. There must be a series of " step-ups." In- 
tervals of contrast must not allow the audience to slip 
away. 

As a play is a series of crises it must be rehearsed as a 
succession of wave motions — if the figure of speech be per- 
mitted. Tempo, motion, emotion, stress, strain, rise, height, 
culmination, subsidence, relief, contrast, cadence, all these 
must be recognized and secured. A play is of course, a 
unified entity, but when analyzed it will present a series of 
diversified links in a chain of related circumstances. A 
director must strive during rehearsals to attain these ef- 
fects, which the audience may not be able to explain in 
detail, but which an audience reacts to as surely as piano 
strings respond to the touch upon the keys. In printing 
our plays in English we do not indicate such progressions 
beyond inserting more or less adequate stage directions. 
The Latin nations have until recently, when the practice 
seems to be less consistently followed, indicated as a sepa- 
rate " scene " each division within which no entrances or 
exits are made. To a reader this system of printing the 
acts upon the page is needlessly confusing. It is much 
plainer to clearly provide entrance and exit directions. 
But it does visualize the unity of a situation, the complete- 



86 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

ness of a scene. And it does help directors and performers 
to raise the level, or build a climax, or emphasize a con- 
trast, or sink to ordinary conversation, or relieve pathos by 
comedy; or make prominent some of the other reactions 
necessary to keep a play going. For without these rises 
and subsidences, the drama stands still. 

During rehearsals when actors are not likely to be dis- 
turbed by it, the director should direct as the conductor 
of an orchestra leads the rendition of a composition. As 
the characters go through their parts he should give direc- 
tions continually as needed, warning a speaker to slow 
down, urging another to warm up to passion; urging one 
to intensity; leading another into evenness and delibera- 
tion. He can thus accelerate or retard the tempo. He can 
whip up to a fury of sudden explosion. He can quickly re- 
duce to ordinary realism. He can make a pause pregnant 
with mystery. He can coax adoration into the pose and 
tone of an awkward lover. He can stir a quiet winsomeness 
into stinging rebuke. He can make tangible to his group 
those seemingly delicate and unreal elements of rhythm 
and reaction. 

When he can make all these things inherent and con- 
sistent parts of his repetitions he has brought his rehearsals 
to the point for the shading. Then — as he himself is sen- 
sitively attuned to the author's purposes — he can add or 
reduce until there becomes apparent that exquisite cor- 
respondence of interpretation to intention which is the end 
of all true art. 

Often not enough cuts are made to bring the play within 
the ability of amateurs. For all other dicta to the con- 





Models of scenery for Central High School stage, 

Saint Louis. 
The upper was used in Twelfth Night and Loves 

Labor Lost. The lower in Twelfth Night and 

The Comedy of Errors. 





Wells College. All-girl casts. 



Above: Bur.hido, by Takeda Izuma. 



Below: Le Malade Imaginaire, by Moliere. 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 87 

trary notwithstanding, plays must be cut for amateurs, 
even as they are for professionals. The changes and 
adaptations made in producing plays are beyond enumera- 
tion. Sir James M. Barrie, interrogated about the ex- 
cellent last line spoken in What Every Woman Knows, 
which does not appear in the printed play, frankly ad- 
mitted that he had forgotten the " funny " line delivered 
on the stage. " I probably put it in at rehearsal and it 
has gone legging away on its own." Eugene O'Neill's 
Beyond the Horizon had entire scenes cut when it was put 
upon the stage. 

School and college instructors hold up a warning hand, 
declaring that the text of Shakespeare is sacred, that not 
a single line must be excised. Yet we seem to have his 
own practice for the cuts necessary for modern conditions. 
The Quartos of King Lear are about 175 lines longer than 
the Folio of 1623. Some 220 lines not in the Folio are in 
the Quartos. The Folio contains 50 lines not in the Quar- 
tos. The Folio omits one entire scene found in the Quar- 
tos. In this connection an interested student will find the 
remarks on the various Quartos of The Merchant of Venice 
printed in the Variorium Edition by Furness especially 
interesting and illuminating. 

It is in concluding acts that amateurs usually fail. 
They have not the endurance to carry a long play easily. 
They may not be conscious of it, but they have used up 
most of their energy. Try as they will, the last act lacks 
freshness and vigor. So they must be rehearsed for en- 
durance. Before the last act is reached they have also 
used up their supply of acting devices, so that there is the 



88 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

suggestion of monotony in their presentations. This ac- 
counts in part for the general " let-down." To counteract 
this some justifiable devices or stage tricks are in many in- 
stances resorted to. Changes of costume or setting may 
help interest the audience and so relieve the strain upon 
the cast. Attention may be diverted to extraneous features 
until the actors can assume the burden of responsibility 
and successfully bear it to a satisfying conclusion. Mod- 
ern stagecraft with its interest in lighting, color, decora- 
tion, here finds opportunity for its support to the acting. 
I am not attempting to justify every resort to such meas- 
ures. I am merely pointing out a fact which must be 
reckoned with in attempts to improve the level of amateur 
productions. Such devices are reprehensible only when 
they submerge the effect of the play as drama. If they 
enforce the dramatic value they are within the director's 
province. 

To correct further the usual commonplaceness of the 
latter part of a play, the last act should be rehearsed longer 
and more carefully than is usually done. Many directors 
start rehearsing it too close to the performance. It there- 
fore does not move as certainly as it should. Yet, as it is 
the most significant part of the play, it should be the best 
acted. 

A good director should have numerous devices for help- 
ing rehearsals. Groups and combinations should be planned 
so that minor characters are not kept waiting about with 
nothing to do except to disturb by chattering and giggling. 
Self-conscious performers should be rehearsed privately in 
love passages, comic scenes, and tense situations, until 



REHEARSING THE PLAY 89 

they are good enough to impress the other members of the 
cast. 

The play should be ready in every acting detail at least 
a week before the scheduled performance. This is an all- 
important matter. During those last days the producer 
should be free to give time and attention to costumes, 
make-up, scenery, lighting, properties, and the thousand 
and one details which make play-producing the most vexa- 
tious as well as the most fascinating undertaking in the 
world. 



CHAPTER VI 
ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 

It is perfectly possible — as some amateur enthusiasts 
assert — to present plays without any scenery. Several 
years ago almost a dozen directors advertised perform- 
ances of Shakespeare, emphasizing as a decided feature that 
the productions were in " the Elizabethan manner." This 
usually meant without scenery. So far as it involved a 
stage almost entirely free from built sets, the manner was 
Elizabethan. The great difficulty today is that no one can 
say with certainty exactly what the method of presenta- 
tion was in Shakespeare's time. It is incredible that at the 
time Inigo Jones, court painter and architect, was devising 
and constructing the elaborate mechanical and picturesque 
settings demanded by the masques of Ben Jonson, the 
professional playhouse — always quick to adopt court man- 
ners and interests — did not follow as close as its financial 
resources would allow. Sketches and descriptions of court 
entertainments prove that elaborate equipment and scenery 
were employed. The stage after 1603 must have reflected 
this great advance in stage decoration. 

Most modern attempts to interest theater-goers in these 
self-denominated antiquarian revivals always overlook this 
possibility of late Shakespearean settings. A mistake more 
serious than their attempt to cover poor acting and ama- 
teurish characterization by bare scaffolding is their dis- 

90 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 91 

regard of the cardinal fact of Elizabethan professional stage 
record — a single fact which removes forever any wide ap- 
peal of an accurate repetition. The women's roles were en- 
acted by boys. 

In colleges — whether in fairly serious drama or howling 
musical comedy — we may look upon raw youth disporting 
itself in feminine lingerie, and if it doesn't have to speak 
too many lines, and if it remembers to take short steps 
in walking, and not to pull its skirt up when it sits, we may 
at times drop into a voluntary illusion. But a restoration 
of Elizabethan casting to a beautifully poetic play of 
Shakespeare's is horrible even to discuss. 

A compromise setting may be made quite beautiful, 
even when reduced to such simplicity and exercised with 
such flexibility as the settings shown many years back by 
the New Theater of New York, and more recently by 
Walter Hampden, E. H. Sothern, and Alfred Hopkins, 
When reduced to their simplest equipment, old plays need 
draped stages. 

Modern plays may be presented with not even that much 
decoration. For certain dramas the end of a room which 
is large enough to accommodate the audience will serve 
admirably. If the actors can be plainly seen, not even a 
platform is needed. In many large houses three or four 
plays have been offered in a single evening with entirely 
different sets. This has been managed by having the spec- 
tators pick up their chairs and move from the bare billiard 
room after seeing Augustus Does His Bit by G. Bernard 
Shaw to the large hallway to watch a short play such as 
Fancy Free by Stanley Houghton presented on the stair 



92 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

landing, then to the conservatory to see, perhaps, Sutro's 
A Marriage Has Been Arranged. M. Maeterlinck had his 
Pelleas and Melisande so produced in the old buildings of 
St. Wandrille, his home in France. But a series of such 
peripatetic productions would cease to be a novelty and 
become a bore. Also, a large number of most attractive 
plays and effects are barred entirely by such methods. 

The natural beauty of outdoors will frame a host of 
other plays more adequately. Volumes of them have been 
written, although more recently the more practicable and 
sensible form of spectacular pageantry has almost usurped 
the earlier popularity of al fresco performances. Such sur- 
roundings determine the material of the play. They pre- 
clude delicate effects, precise shadings. t They preclude 
stories turning upon or developed by involved dialogue, or 
nice points of characterization. The more action depends 
upon broad movements, the more nearly the theme permits 
of pantomimic interpretation, the better for both perform- 
ers and audience. Add to these drawbacks of outdoor act- 
ing the always impending inclemency of American weather, 
the summer open-air noises, the behavior of an outdoor 
crowd, and you will gain an adequate idea of all the ele- 
ments to be considered in undertaking such risks. Also 
keep clearly in mind the difference between plays on one 
side and processions, pageantry, masques, spectacles, and 
such related entertainments, on the other. 

With all disadvantages counted at their true cost, there 
are always recompensing delights about open-air produc- 
tions. 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 93 

The mere terms " play " and " production " connote at 
least a stage of some size and scenery of some sort. 

So far as scenery is concerned the best starting point 
entails only four elements — the producer who knows ex- 
actly how he wants the play to be set, enough space to 
erect a good set, artistic ability to create the design or 
model, and enough material means to complete it. 

Material means does not signify money only. It in- 
cludes scenery already built, paints, lumber, canvas, blocks, 
draperies, rugs and carpets, and the thousand and one 
things which accumulate in theaters and houses. In daring 
exhibitions of artistic ability in stage settings, amateurs 
far outstep professionals, who just now are adopting de- 
vices heralded ten years ago by enthusiastic amateur art 
directors. The most crying need of all amateur stages is 
space — space to the right, space to the left, space to the 
rear, and space overhead. Every producer must know 
exactly how he wants every play set, for every play pre- 
sents problems of its own. The same kind of settings 
through an entire season would result in that reducer of 
the size of all audiences — monotony. 

Never — if you can prevent it — allow any stage which 
you control to be loaded with the four conventional sets 
produced by professional scene builders acting on their 
own initiative to provide your theater with equipment sug- 
gesting the country town's " op'ry house." These regular 
stock pieces include always a nondescript woodland, a 
park with a struggling putty group painted on the back 
drop, a " drawing-room " with a wide archway, two doors, 



94 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

but never any windows, and fourth, usually painted on the 
rear side of the preceding, a kitchen. There is no denying 
that these sets may be needed at some time. But if you 
are connected with a school, college, club, or community cen- 
ter, block every attempt to get this " stock " when the 
building is completed. Have the money put into income- 
bearing securities which can be promptly converted into 
cash to buy scenery as occasion requires. Or take part 
of it and drape the entire stage with beautifully colored 
curtains which will serve as attractive backgrounds for lec- 
turers, musicians, dancers, yes — and many plays as well. 

Do not be led by over-enthusiastic praise in books into 
fixing upon your stage those devices, which though excel- 
lent for houses needing them, may be merely extravagant 
white elephants for you. I have been told that the revolv- 
ing stage in the Little Theater of New York was before 
the most recent alterations used mainly to convey furniture 
from the front to the rear at a speed easily equaled by 
the usual manner of handling, yet you will find scores of 
books and magazine articles glibly talking about the value 
of such a modern appliance. Very little is said of the me- 
chanical structural aspect, or of the expense in supplying 
power to operate such devices. Do not have a permanent 
plaster cyclorama built until you have carefully consid- 
ered all its possible interference with tackle for borders, 
border lights, ceilings, foliage, etc. For the number of 
times you are going to need it, consider whether a canvas 
drop will not do as well. In other words, keep your stage 
space as free as possible from all permanent encumbrances. 

A draped stage will serve for hundreds of plays. If the 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 95 

hangings will take tints in lighting, almost any effect can 
be secured. Furniture, decorations, hangings, costumes, will 
fix the period and kind of place being represented. Cur- 
tains permit entrances at all points. If many sets are 
hung upon wires they should be arranged to move easily 
for quick changes. The business manager of the Benson 
Company of Stratford-on-Avon in 19 14 discussed with me 
the production of The Merchant of Venice entirely before 
draperies. Some such device was used in part in the pro- 
duction of this play in London, with the New York actor, 
Maurice Moscovitch, as Shylock. In the Shakespeare Fes- 
tival at Stratford-on-Avon, in 1920 many quick changes 
of scenes were made by drawing curtains and tapestries 
strung upon wires. 

Plainly colored curtains hanging clear of the floor in 
vertical folds may serve as modern drawing-rooms or sets 
for costume plays. Suggestions of decorations will give 
almost endless variety. A landscape broadly painted, with 
knightly figures in it, may serve as tapestries for either 
modern rooms or medieval chambers. If Shakespearean 
producers years ago had known a little more about his- 
torical accuracy and beauty of effects, even Hamlet and 
Lear could have been decorated more effectively and eco- 
nomically. Instead of displaying crudely painted stone 
walls, any bare framework might have been hung with 
genuine curtains in modern imitation of the medieval arras. 
Not only would this have been more beautiful but it would 
have allowed more rapid change of setting. In one scene 
in Hamlet it would have permitted a vivid reproduction 
of what Shakespeare intended, instead of a mawkish make- 



96 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

shift. In the closet scene Polonius should hide behind the 
arras, always hung a foot or more away from the damp 
stone walls, instead of stealing off into an alcove or door- 
way. 

Practically any play of the past may be set within cur- 
tained spaces, while not a few more modern ones — not de- 
manding too finished realism — can be thus set much more 
beautifully than by means of the usual old-fashioned in- 
terior flats. Every school which has been wondering 
whether it had better repaint its interior set, or have a new 
one built, can spend the money to better advantage in 
draperies. Tapestries will set nearly all French plays and 
many English ones as well. For any Moliere interior you 
need merely cover your canvas walls with hangings. A 
few hangings flanking a monumental fire-place will carry 
you back to any indeterminate or definite period particu- 
larized by the furniture, the costumes, and the dialogue of 
the characters. Even Italy may be thus simulated. 

The orient may be brought upon a large stage by drap- 
ing most of it in black and gold, then showing through 
tall, straight openings, towers, peaks, domes, and minarets 
against the brilliant blue back-drop, or against the purple 
of night. There is absolutely no limit to the use, effective- 
ness, and beauty of draperies upon both large and small 
stages. 

If you can purchase only one set of hangings you must 
be careful of the color. No general rules for choice can 
be given, as so much depends upon the frame of your stage 
pictures; upon the color scheme of the auditorium walls, 
seats, ceiling; upon your lighting equipment; upon the fre- 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 97 

quency of its use. Expert advice upon the spot is worth a 
score of haphazard opinions at long range. Browns, grays, 
blues, are more likely to prove satisfactory than any others. 
Beware of decoration or ornamentation such as gilt bor- 
ders, clusters of fruit, metallic lines, corner pieces, con- 
ventionalized designs, period applications, art nouveau, sym- 
bols, faddist propaganda. Try to put repose, charm, dis- 
tinction into your backgrounds. Let everything else be 
added as individual plays require. 

For period, poetic, romantic plays, draperies serve ad- 
mirably. Difficulty arises as soon as modern, realistic ma- 
terial requires dressing. Windows and doors — at least mod- 
ern ones — do not seem congruous in such unusual sur- 
roundings. Though enthusiasts may declaim, it is impos- 
sible to produce without realistic scenery such plays as 
Trifles by Susan Glaspell, Riders to the Sea of J. M. Synge, 
In the Zone by Eugene O'Neill, The Cat and the Cherub 
by F. C. Fernald, You Never Can Tell by G. Bernard 
Shaw, the first act of Doctor in Spite of Himself by Mo- 
liere. So the producer and his art staff will have to turn to 
built scenery. 

A built interior can be made just as beautiful as a cur- 
tained or tapestried one. If you have money build each 
interior as you need it, and make it exactly right for its 
purpose. If you are not affluent, do not be too pronounced 
in colors, style, architectural detail, and ornament. Let the 
built scenery merely suggest possible kinds of walls. Let 
your treatment by rugs, furniture, pictures, hangings, do all 
the rest. Build your sets always so that they may be used 
again and again, even without repainting. Producers who 



98 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

use and recommend screens for scenery will enforce this 
advice. Remember that rearrangement of pieces will pro- 
duce new sets. 

Your art staff must know much of the practical con- 
struction of stage scenery. The first principle is that all 
scenery should be so constructed that it can be worked 
from the stage floor. Pieces which have upon their edges 
two halves of hinges which are to fit together and can be 
fastened by having a long wire nail pushed through the 
parts may be practicable, provided the highest hinge can 
be reached from the stage. If a ladder or box or chair is 
needed, that scenery is badly constructed. Any pieces 
taller than ten or eleven feet will likely not fit closely to- 
gether at the top if this kind of fastening is used. 

Some amateurs provide grooves on the floor and ceiling. 
Into these grooves are fitted or slid the pieces of scenery 
until they meet edge to edge. In successful result such 
scenes should give an impression of well-constructed solid- 
ity. If edges are straight and junctures are at exact right 
angles there should be no yawning gaps in the meeting 
lines. But this is a poor method because it makes all stage 
spaces the same size. All rooms and open spaces have to 
be the same distance to the rear, and right and left. The 
slope of side walls has to be calculated beforehand and 
all interiors shaped exactly alike. Practically no alcoves, 
corners, arches, can be set without pulling up and renail- 
ing the grooves. Exteriors are especially ungainly in this 
make-shift. Wood wings or tree side-pieces usually look 
best if they almost parallel the footlights. As grooves for 
these nailed to the stage floor at each side would project 





The Shepherd in the Distance, by Holland Hudson. 



Above : The Little Theater, Denver. 
Below : Smith College, Northampton. 





Scenery designs by C. Raymond Jonson 



Above: The Pretty Sabine Women, by L. Andrecv. 



Below : The Maker of Dreams, by Oliphant Down. 
Walls, flat gray, rather dark. Furniture, lighter 
gray. The room is seen through the large win- 
dow fitted into the proscenium. One character 
entered from the audience, pretending to raise the 
sash. 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 99 

into any room which might be set during the same bill, 
and as these grooves parallel to the stage front would have 
to cross, intersect, or interfere with the grooves for side 
walls, there would be endless toil and trouble. 

There seems really not a single thing to be said in favor 
of such a hardened stage manipulation. It harks back to 
the days before the eighties when grooves above the stage 
were provided to support scenery. Those methods are 
antiquated. Only ignorance of real stage methods can be 
the reasons for the retention of any such outworn device. 
When a groove has no scenery fitted into it, it is a certain 
stumbling block for performers. The entire floor of the 
stage from one side wall to the other and from the foot- 
lights clear to the rear wall should be absolutely level. Not 
the slightest projection should mar its surface. Even elec- 
tric light plugs should be sunk beneath little covering trap- 
doors or plates. 

If ceiling and stage are not exactly parallel as is more 
flian likely true in schools, churches, halls, converted thea- 
ters, etc., there are troubles in fitting. This scheme seems 
totally bad. 

Another device if the stage is so small that scenery is 
not too far from the walls of the building is to have screw- 
eyes in the scenery frames. Between these and other screw- 
eyes along the walls at the same height are placed strips 
of wood with projecting nails at the ends. These are not 
too high to be reached easily but are high enough to allow 
unrestricted passage of persons under them. As the sides 
of sets always slope and the building walls are straight, 
the length for every point must be accurately calculated. 



ioo PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Unless carefully placed, these projecting screw-eyes will 
push holes through canvas when the flats are stacked. Al- 
though once used at the Provincetown Theater, this method 
seems cumbersome compared with the best one. Pieces of 
interior scenery (flats) should be laced together with a 
rope which should be fastened to the right side near the 



y/ '% 


// \ 




' 1 


1 




It— 




1 

x 4 


t 








Rear of scenery showing method of lacing and bracing. 

top of every piece of interior scenery made. Every left 
edge should have below this point a cleat or nail behind 
which the rope is caught. About a yard from the bottom 
of the scenery are two long nails parallel with the canvas, 
around which the line can be fastened. A person can do 
this without even stooping. If the set be quite tall the 
lacing may pass across more times than this. 

When a box set of this kind is put up, its angles will 
make it stand. Large sets can be made more stable by in- 
serting alcoves, or by cutting off corners at sloping angles, 
or by providing for a projection into the end or middle 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 101 

of a wall. More stability is secured by using regular stage 
braces at various points. These are adjustable supports 
with at one end a hook which catches a hole in a cleat 
fastened to the frame about eight or nine feet from the 
bottom, and at the other a large flat eye through which 
a stage-screw is put into the floor. Not many — perhaps 
none — are required for small box sets, for they will stand 
by themselves. If there are reasons why the stage should 
not be marked by the holes made by the stage-screws it is 
easy to nail down at certain points with long thin wire 
nails, a few blocks of soft wood about two inches thick. In 
these the screws can be fastened. One screw will hold two 
or more braces. When the block of wood is removed at 
the end of the performance no marks remain except the 
small holes made by the few nails. Braces help in rapid 
changes, for the stage is really set and the acting may begin 
before all the braces are in place. 

In some arrangements, instead of using the stage-screw 
through the metal foot of the brace, a heavy weight is 
placed upon it. While practicable for light pieces, or those 
needed for only a short time, this weight is not so secure as 
the screw. A director can frequently make use of sand 
bags to anchor braces. 

In order to facilitate changes on the professional stage 
there has recently come into use a device which will be a 
great boon to little theaters in making changes — if they 
ever have the stage space to accommodate it, and the money 
to carry it out adequately — both conditions doubtful of 
realization. Low platforms upon rollers or small wheels 
are constructed. If the space required for acting is quite 



102 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

small, one such platform is sufficient. In other cases several 
must be provided which when fitted together cover the floor 
space of the stage opening. Upon these platforms are 
erected the pieces of scenery, which then remain upon them. 
The scenes are "struck " or taken apart only as necessity 
requires. All of the scenery which can be kept intact and 
all properties and furniture remain upon the small platform 
which is rolled off to one side out of the way. 

A large amount of off-stage space is needed for such ar- 
rangements. I was told that in The Masguerader clearance 
between platforms in many of the changes was only about 
an inch. This device made possible the changes in Eyes 
of Youth and A Voice in the Dark. It was also used, with- 
out the same necessity of rapid change, in Keep Her Smil- 
ing and Tea for Three. 

As these platforms raise the scene floor above the regu- 
lar stage level, an inclined section has to be permanently 
installed across the front of the stage, sloping up from im- 
mediately behind the footlights to behind the curtain line. 
The moveable platforms are pushed tight up against its 
rear, so that no rough edges are perceptible. 

While this device would solve the ever-annoying one of 
stage waits and clumsy scene shifting on amateur stages, 
there is little chance of its being used widely because it 
demands space and money. And these two things are ex- 
actly what few if any amateur organizations ever have in 
sufficient amounts. 

In planning for some modern interiors in plays it is pos- 
sible to have certain sections hinged so that fitting and 
lacing are unnecessary. A long straight back wall may be 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 103 

built in two sections hinged, so that the entire side of a 
room may be set in a few seconds. As a door usually has 
wall space on both sides another combination of three 
hinged flats may be evolved. This triple piece will serve 
as a single wall with the door in the middle, or the door can 
be brought close to a corner by turning one flat down or 
across stage to start the adjoining wall. An arch, or wide 
doorway, may be combined with two wall flats in exactly 
the same manner. If practicable two pieces to serve as 
room corners might be hinged. 

Your idea of what you want should be discussed with 
a builder of professional scenery. He will show you or 
invent for you ingenious methods of carrying out your 
projects of which you would never dream. 

Scenery frames are most satisfactory when they are 
built by professional scene builders who work accurately 
from drawn plans or scaled models, or when they are built 
by good carpenters in exactly the same manner. Joints 
must be firm, angles must be right angles, edges must fit, 
doors must swing and close freely, the frames must last. 
Even for small stages the cost of lumber is an item to be 
kept low. 

Unless you are forced to, do not use the old-fashioned 
painted borders to represent ceilings. If your stage has a 
permanent ceiling so low that the audience can see it, build 
your sets so that they almost touch it. There may be a 
small space between the scenery and the ceiling, but if 
you make the gap small, and treat properly the tops of the 
walls, that opening will not jar upon spectators. If the 
stage slopes until the spaces on each side increase towards 



104 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the front, that is, if stage floor and ceiling are not parallel, 
set the side walls to point off-stage towards the front, and 
these gaps will not be so apparent. They will not disturb 
any one even if they are seen. Audiences accept worse 






Various shapes of interiors secured by different arrangements of 
the same pieces of scenery. 

things in every professional performance. If your space 
above the stage will let you hang a ceiling, by all means, 
have one made. Have it painted a color not to attract 
attention. 

Many scene designers in the endeavor to make a stage 
look like a room have the rear wall built as a single piece 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 105 

so that no junctures are visible. The drawback about 
such a piece of scenery is that it is rather heavy to move, 
bulky to stack, and too long to use anywhere else. For 
small stages the best rule is to have all scenery made in 
sections. Determine upon some unit of size, then have all 
pieces related to that same scale. Make all the large flats 
the same width; then have a few smaller sections (called 
jogs) to provide alcoves, angles, projections, etc. For in- 
stance, if your stage space permits, decide upon twenty-one 
feet as width and fourteen feet as depth of the usual full 
stage space. Keep this size as the unit of the largest three 
wall interiors you will set. Then design all your scenery 
with relation to this standard size. Make all doors the 
same size. Make arches — wide doorways — twice the size 
of a single door. Make the rear wall in three sections each 
seven feet wide, the side walls of two sections each of the 
same size. Two or four narrow jogs one-fourth the size of 
the larger flats will provide for rearrangements. Extra 
sections can be added if unusual doors and windows are 
needed as for instance doors with transoms or windows with 
real glass to be broken. Carry this same system of unit 
or related sizes into all the scenery you construct. Have 
your steps, platforms, cubes, columns, pylons, if any are 
needed, bear some mathematical relation to the other parts 
of your settings. But do not buy or build anything until 
you need it. Even then, see if something you already have 
will not serve. Thus, your scenery will be practicable 
for many purposes. 

Learn by other people's errors as well as by their achieve- 
ments. An enthusiastic club director told me of the re- 



106 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

markable dining room interior she had just had finished 
by professional scene builders in which the plaster was 
gone from parts of the walls, leaving the laths beneath ex- 
posed. She had actually had those holes painted upon the 
newly made scenery, rendering it useless for any play ex- 
cept the one in rehearsal. When I suggested that the room 
should have been finished properly, and then those marks 




Interior of room showing combination of pieces. 

of decay painted upon pieces of canvas and attached to 
the walls for this one time only, she nearly fainted. No 
idea of future uses of that large set had ever entered her 
head. A productions committee ordered an interior set for 
an English comedy. An idea of spaciousness was to be 
secured upon the small stage by designing a deep box set. 
The rear wall was built of three flats with a door in the 
middle one. That was good. Each side wall also was of 
three pieces. The two nearest the footlights were each 
seven feet wide; the one joining the rear wall was six. If 
there had been a necessity of economizing, two of these 
flats could have been dispensed with easily merely by in- 



ARTISTIC AMATEUR SETTINGS 107 

creasing the width of the two front ones from seven feet 
to eight feet or even eight and one half. The three or 
four feet cut off the depth of the room would not have 
impaired either the acting or the appearance. Reducing 
the number of pieces to be handled also makes for better 
stage manipulation in amateur productions. Another di- 
rector with one set which had served in several plays al- 
ready, added Greek shields to give a classic tone, and at 
another time stretched a decorative Chinese border painted 
on paper around the top to secure an oriental effect. 

Remember always that arrangement, furniture, hangings, 
and costumes will help amazingly in securing effects. 



CHAPTER VII 
CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 

Foe setting realistic plays a good general rule is to set 
them realistically. This does not mean that one should 
go so far as the limits of inclusiveness exhibited by Mr. 
Belasco in The Return of Peter Grimm, ever since its run 
held up as the absolute reductio ad absurdum of fidelity 
to things as they are. But it does mean that the setting 
should be in the tone, in the style, in the atmosphere of 
the drama itself. When a director turns to drama of other 
kinds, he must invoke different methods. Romantic, his- 
torical, poetic, costume, fanciful dramas admit of treat- 
ments in the same veins. They allow originality, bizarre 
effects, pictorial settings, spectacular appeals. 

Some directors have peculiar talents in one or another 
of the preceding kinds. One will be at his best with real- 
istic matters, another will be successful only with the his- 
torical, a third will always be able to create unusual stage 
decorations. In your amateur organization, therefore, you 
should try to fit the group producing it to the play itself. 
One pair who will be applauded for oriental scenic and 
costume effects, may fail ignominously with the G. Bernard 
Shaw dentist's office in You Never Can Tell. There is as 
much real stage ability in a good realistic set as in any 
other kind, but most amateurs will always feel that there 
are more opportunities for original creation in the others. 

108 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 109 

If you are going to present even a few dramas outside 
the realistic field you will likely find many chances to use 
a back-drop answering the purposes of a cyclorama. For 
this, in all usual amateur productions, a back-drop as large 
in both dimensions as possible is all that need be provided. 
In having it painted, do not make the mistake of having it 
colored a flat bright blue. I know of one like this; it was 
evolved as a notable experiment. It looks always like 
nothing except a kalsomined kitchen wall. Have your 
back-drop painted quite light at the bottom, gradually 
growing bluer as the color rises. Take a discriminating 
squint at the heavens from the horizon up towards the 
zenith on any clear day, and you will get about the proper 
gradation of color. Dark blue lights will make this as 
deep as any night sky, while red and yellow will tint it 
beautifully for dawn or sunset. White, in varying degrees, 
will make it cold and chill. 

Before such a drop you can suggest practically any- 
thing demanded by plays. A medieval town can be pic- 
tured if you set a wall across the stage near the rear, then 
mask at each side by showing the ends of houses. You can 
represent four streets converging in an open space. Or at 
one side you may set the corner of a house, at the other 
trees or formal hedges to suggest the garden, and across 
the back a wall or high trimmed hedge with high barred 
gates. A few low rock pieces, some scrubby trees, and a 
few gaunt, taller ones to mask the sides, will suggest a 
bleak wind-swept plateau or table-land against the clear 
blue sky. Put a low line of hills some feet before this 
same back-drop, or the blue of a distant river with the sil- 



no PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

houette of a town on its further side, erect an angled orien- 
tal house-wall at one side of the stage with a few palms 
projecting above it, and at the other side erect a city gate, 
and you have an eastern exterior setting to serve for many 
different plays. 

If you set a pair of wood wings at right and left of the 
stage, giving the suggestion of hedges and clipped copses, 
a pair of lower hedges towards the rear, behind them some 
Lombardy poplars lower than the side trees, and directly 
behind the break in the hedge at the center, some flower 
urns and the top of a flight of steps, you will have the ter- 
race of a formal garden quite suitable for all of Love's La- 
bor's Lost and Olivia's garden in Twelfth Night. 

A blue sky is usually exactly the proper backing to be 
seen through the windows of an interior set. So useful is 
such a back-drop that one might almost say it should be 
the first piece of scenery to be purchased for an amateur 
stage. 

Though your available equipment of scenery is restricted, 
try to avoid monotony. Remember that amateurs have 
made greater strides in the material aids to production 
than in anything else. Try in your case to make your 
acting as good as the sets your artistic staff can evolve. 
Do not adopt any single device of stage decoration and use 
it so frequently that it becomes monotonous. Try for as 
many different kinds of effects as you can conceive. Mo- 
notony will always repel audiences. Lord Dunsany's most 
recent skit, A Good Bargain, may be set unconventionally, 
but the interior for his tragedy, A Night at an Inn, can be 
nothing except a room in an abandoned hostelry. Ingenu- 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE in 

ity would be not only wasted on it, but dangerous for the 
effect of the tragedy. Many plays of Shakespeare can 
be acted before curtains, but hardly Strindberg's The 
Stronger, which prescribes "A corner of a ladies' restau- 
rant." That charming French pantomime, Pierrot the Pro- 
digal, may fittingly be performed in settings which sug- 
gest a child's picture-book but it would be the height of 
ridiculous folly to put Shaw's Candida or You Never Can 
Tell in such surroundings. Alfred Kreymborg's Lima Beans 
may be as futuristic as you please. But the first act of 
Moliere's Le Medecin Malgre Lui cannot be acted among 
trees fantastically created by folds of colored cloth drop- 
ping from the stage loft, because every one in the audi- 
ence would recognize the silliness of trying to cut faggots 
from any part of that impossible forest. It is in such spread- 
ing of devices, excellent within limitations, to the wide field 
of all drama that enthusiastic art directors make their 
monumental blunders. 

Let us consider a few detailed specifications for stage 
settings of the kinds of plays for which amateurs are likely 
to need help. 

First considerations are that there must be something 
at the back of the stage, and something at each side to 
mask the spaces beyond. This necessity of providing scen- 
ery to cover the sides of the stage has frequently had a de- 
cided influence upon the setting which the dramatist chooses 
for his play. We are told that Synge first planned to have 
The Playboy of the Western World open in the plowed field 
where Christy strikes his father, but he could not see any 
possible side wings for that wide, windy corner of high, dis- 



ii2 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

tant hills. Eugene O'Neill gave the scenery designer a dif- 
ficult task in his descriptions of the open spaces in Beyond 
the Horizon, the last scene of which was not even put upon 
the stage. 

Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors might be acted in 
a picturesque, conventionalized Elizabethan stage, such as 
Walter Hampden used in his Hamlet except that Shake- 
speare so definitely demands knocking on a gate in full 
view of the audience that some provision must be made 
for that comedy feature. If a different kind of set is at- 
tempted, let me suggest one which will answer. 

Hang a blue back-drop across the rear of the stage. 
Several feet in front of it erect a wall some six or seven 
feet high, above which extend several tree profiles. Have 
a gate a little to one side of stage center. Having placed 
as much of this as space permits, erect in front of it all 
the interior for the first scene of the play. This may be 
merely a small boxed interior, decorated with shields, hang- 
ings, and furnishings to suggest a room in the Palace of 
the Duke of Ephesus. Easily removed, it does not delay 
the action of the first act. If you want some slight novelty, 
you might make only two walls visible, sloping one gradu- 
ally almost fully across stage, then bringing the short one 
sharply down towards the corner. Or you might have col- 
umns at the back mark open spaces through which show 
stretches of the trees and sky, which are already set for 
the subsequent scenes. After the interior has been re- 
moved, place a couple of houses, right and left; arrange 
a few Greek stone benches about the open space, and you 
need make no further changes for any following scenes of 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 113 

the play. In the last act the nunnery from which the long- 
lost mother and wife is summoned can be imagined as off- 
stage. As the last act proceeds, an effective change in 
lighting will enhance the scene. One character remarks, 
" The dial points at five/' so sunset colors may spread 
over the back sky, then advance to the fore-stage to tint 
the entire picture. 

Such a method will produce attractive, beautiful settings 
at little cost. This plan might almost be called a stationary 
setting. 

Quite different are the demands made by Calthrop and 
Barker's The Harlequinade, a play admirably suited to 
amateur actors and audiences. 

This fantastic excursion requires five different sets. They 
are the Banks of the Styx, an Italian Garden, Lord Eglan- 
tine's Room, the Ninety-ninth Street Theater, exterior and 
interior. The last scene shows the Banks of the Styx 
again. 

So many sets present difficulties for amateurs. For this 
play the matter is all the more complicated because the 
changes of scenery must be made within a certain time, as 
two characters before the curtain go on talking and an- 
nounce the next scene. They even give the signal for the 
curtain. To have the play move smoothly, the stage must 
be completely set by that time. These requirements were 
met in the first production in America of The Harlequinade 
by hanging a blue back-drop at the extreme rear of the 
stage. Just in front of this was set as much of the ter- 
race, ballustrades, trees, and shrubbery of the Italian gar- 
den as space would permit. For borders, black draped 



ii4 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

hangings were used, while long black curtains served as 
wings. These borders and side draperies remained un- 
changed throughout the whole performance, serving as 
black frames around the colored pictures set within and 
behind them. 

Before the portions of the garden already set were 
stood two rock-like profiles to suggest the bleak Banks of 
the Styx. Under a cold blue light they seemed as unreal 
as Hades should be. In direct lines parallel to the foot- 
lights, shafts of colored lights were thrown straight across 
the stage, making various planes of light. Such distribu- 
tion made possible the entrance of Mercury in a brilliant 
high light, while all the other characters on the stage stood 
in subdued amber. 

When this scene was concluded only the two profiles and 
a couple of rocks had to be removed. A couple of tree 
wings were set and the Italian garden was complete. To 
dress the eighteenth century room of Lord Eglantine col- 
ored drapes were lowered from above, and a blue and white 
wall was set straight across the rear. Furniture, pictures, 
and costumes did the rest. The exterior of the Ninety- 
ninth Street Theater was a shallow scene before a garish 
curtain containing advertising signs, lowered near the front. 
Behind it was set the black, white, and green futuristic in- 
terior made by a single back-drop. The removal of this, 
and the replacing of the rock profiles of the first scene 
revealed again the blue back-drop and the Banks of the 
Styx. 

The recommendation has been given that scenery should 
be constructed by professional scene builders. There may 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 115 

be a great deal of fun and some experience involved in 
concocting amateur sets carpentered, covered, and painted 
by tyros, and in some instances where that peculiar educa- 
tional fetish " self-expression " is sought, such practices 
may be indulged in. If such sets indicate their origin and 
growth by awkward angles, crooked lines, sprawling de- 
signs, yawning gaps, and difficulty of manipulation, the 
audience will be tolerant and generous in allowances, but 
the fact remains that what they are being offered is not a 
good production but a makeshift. For amateurs the ease 
of changing, the lightness, and the durability of well-made 
scenery overweigh all objections against it. 

I know cf one school which had built in 19 12 an interior 
set of which each flat is fourteen feet high, seven feet wide. 
There are two jogs to make alcoves or projections, bring- 
ing the number of pieces to ten. Two of the large flats, 
hinged, make an arch, or wide doorway, which is usually 
draped with curtains. There are two ordinary doors. 
Carrying out the principle laid down some pages back of 
not having the interior walls suggest too decidedly any 
one period, an artist and a professional scene builder were 
consulted by the director of plays. Hundreds of colored 
sketches of interiors from the scenery company's plates 
were examined, stage settings were compared, and finally 
a rather severe, lined, paneled wall was decided on. The 
color scheme was determined with relation to possible fu- 
ture uses as well as the one then contemplated. As the 
auditorium walls and curtain were tan, the scenery colors 
were chosen in tan, gray, and gray green. The features 
of the walls are the plainest of moldings and panels. In 



n6 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

its years of frequent and none too gentle handling it has 
served in a score of totally different plays from Acts I and 
V of A Midsummer Night's Dream to a modern apart- 
ment. Treatment of the walls, and the furniture make 
these settings convincing. It has been modified and ampli- 
fied in the following ways. 

For a modern original comedy, French doors were added 
to the wide doorway. When The Far- Away Princess t}y 
Sudermann was produced the effect of a porch had to be 
secured. The wide doorway was set with a large gauze 
panel. An extra flat exactly like the original was built, 
but in it was set a corresponding gaur? panel. To make 
a smaller window through which the young student climbs, 
one of the doors of the original set had a panel built across 
the bottom. Above this was hung a swinging gauze panel 
to represent a glass window. Behind all these was set 
foliage, tree, and sky backing. 

At another time, Zaragiieta, by the two popular Span- 
ish playwrights, Carrion and Aza, was staged. The cul- 
mination of this two-act farce-comedy depends upon 
drenching the faultlessly tailored Zaragiieta with water 
from a garden force-pump. The hose is stuck through 
the transom of a door behind which a different person is 
believed to be hiding. The old interior, with pictures, fur- 
niture, hangings, added, and the brilliant Spanish costumes 
of the characters, served admirably. All that had to be 
constructed was another flat, this time with a door above 
which swung a practicable transom. One little incongruity 
was easily eradicated. This transomed door had to be very 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 117 

close to another one. The two doors of the original sets 
had no transoms. It would not do, of course, to put in the 
same wall one doorway without a transom and one door- 
way with that addition. There was no need to have con- 
structed another flat for the second transom is not used in 
the play. The scene painter duplicated on a piece of canvas 
the transom which had been carpentered. This small rec- 
tangle of canvas was fastened above the second doorway. 
After the play it was removed and kept for future use. 
As a matter-of-fact, some five years later it was used in a 
second production of the same play. 

For Fanny and the Servant Problem , also known as The 
Second Lady Bantock, by Jerome K. Jerome, it was easy to 
provide furniture, fire-screens, rugs, hangings, and paint- 
ings. The central feature of this English drawing room is 
a portrait of a family ancestor. To emphasize this an 
alcove was set in the rear wall by means of the jogs. As 
the best feature to center attention in one part of a room 
is a fireplace, one with a mantel was built for this occa- 
sion. Above it the portrait of the former Lady Bantock 
was hung. An electric bulb on the mantel shelf below it 
gave another chance to center interest upon it by having 
the young hero turn on the light as he explained to his wife 
the veneration of the family for the original of the paint- 
ing. In a side wall the wide doorway became the opening 
to a wide recessed window, the sides of which were made 
of the two French doors, while the window itself was the 
wide gauze panel, already described as having been made 
for Sudermann's The Far-Away Princess. 



ji8 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

With little upon the walls this same set framed The Dear 
Departed by Stanley Houghton and the later acts of Le 
Medecin Malgre Lui. More recently it was utilized for Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but for this play the flats were 
covered with beautiful long tapestries borrowed from a 
director who had them made to hang upon the walls of 
the English country house required in Art and Opportunity 
by Harold Chapin. Incidentally, ten days after they had 
adorned the Paris house of Monsieur Jourdain they draped 
the small stage of a little theater as a room in a Sultan's 
harem. In Monsieur Jourdain's house, these draperies 
came almost to the floor. The strip of wall space below 
them was broken from the view of the audience by calcu- 
^ lated placing of pieces of furniture, or screens with strips 
of brightly-colored cloths thrown across them to catch and 
hold the eye. Denuded of its tapestried coverings this 
same interior three days later with different furniture was 
housing a fashion and food show to exhibit the work of 
the. domestic science department of the school. 

The foregoing is some indication of the varied uses to 
which the front of this scenery has been put. This set 
had also another side. Its frames were very well made. 
About seven feet above the bottom, cross-pieces of wood 
were placed. Strips at forty-five degrees brace the bottom 
and top corners. 

The rear side of many sets built for amateur use is quite 
usually decorated as a kitchen in the walls of which the 
frames just described are painted as wooden joists while 
the canvas panels are covered with a flat tint. Or some 
other room may be indicated by utilizing these same divi- 





Photograph by Beitt 

Above : The Bracelet, by Alfred Sutro. Cornell Dra- 
matic Club at the New York State Fair, Syracuse. 

Below: Dream Boats, by Dugald Walker. The Col- 
lege Club, Cleveland. 







■ :■"■"" "i'"~l 

mm- 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 119 

sions. Many amateur directors do not seem to realize the 
practicability of such rear views. I know of one school 
organization which, during the war, was to present a one- 
act comedy of the district behind the lines in France. 
Knowing that during the next autumn the school wanted 
to produce The Taming of the Shrew, this first group, when 
it had its scenery built, generously had its French kitchen 
painted on the rear so that the next users could paint upon 
the level canvas front a wainscoted Elizabethan room. 

There are more things to enumerate concerning the first 
interior being considered here. 

When The Comedy of Errors was put into rehearsal it 
was decided to make only one change of setting after the 
first scene. In order to do that quickly, as much of the 
stage as could be was set with suggestions of an " open 
space in Ephesus " for the main portion of the drama* 
For the first scene, " A hall in the Duke's palace," only one 
corner of the spacious room was shown. This was done 
by setting in a long, gradually receding line several flats 
to represent one wall stretching almost entirely across the 
stage; then from its corner a short wall was brought sharply 
down stage to the edge of the proscenium opening. 

The wooden frames which show on the rear of the in- 
terior pieces were painted black, and the canvas was tinted 
tan. The rear of one door was painted to suggest a heav- 
ily timbered gray and black one. Upon the upper panels 
were hung round silvered Greek shields. A couple of 
stone benches, several animal skins flung over them and 
on the floor, and the characters in their Greek costumes, 
set the stage quite effectively for scene I of The Comedy of 



120 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Errors. When the rear of such scenery is turned toward 
the audience it may be necessary to devise some method 
for fastening it other than by lacing, for the ropes stretch- 
ing from near the top to near the bottom may appear in- 
congruous. In this case the flats were overlapped a few 
inches. The lines were thrown over the top and tied to 
stage braces which thus were held tight against the scenery 
frames. This facilitated quick striking. 

A few years later these black and tan flats were in- 
creased in number to set the drinking scene in Twelfth 
Night,, 

For The Chinese Lantern by Laurence Housman, some 
adaptations were made. The open arch was used as the 
frame of the painting by the old master from which the 
painter himself miraculously comes to life. Behind this 
opening the picture itself was built — a platform, vase, rail- 
ing, rug, mandolin, a tree branch painted on paper, and 
black velvet curtains being used. The placing and manipu- 
lation of lights to effect the mystery belong to the discus- 
sion of lighting. The large gauze window prepared for 
the porch of A Far-Away Princess was outlined in black, 
then covered with translucent paper through which colored 
light might be thrown. To bind the room together a 
Chinese design of straight lines, a few curves, many squares 
and rectangles, was painted in black, tan, and blue in sec- 
tions upon pieces of ordinary brown wrapping paper. These 
were hung around the tops, both decorating the chamber 
and hiding the corner braces, some of which for other uses 
had been painted black and seemed slightly out of har- 
mony in a Chinese studio. It would have been a grave 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 121 

mistake to paint that border on the scenery itself. Although 
the stage may appear large and slightly bare in an illustra- 
tion it must be remembered that Oriental costumes are 
brilliant and beautiful, and that this play provides for 
large numbers of people and much action upon the stage. 
This school stage set should be compared with the set de- 
signed and especially built for this same play by Sam Hume 
pictured in Theater Arts for February, 19 17. 

This one set of scenery, front and rear, has in eight 
years served for two original plays, A Midsummer Night's 
Dream, The Far-Away Princess, The Dear Departed, Zara- 
giieta, Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, The Chinese 
Lantern, The Birds' Christmas Carol; Le Medecin MalgrS 
Lui, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Fanny and the Servant 
Problem, Ulysses, and Green Stockings. 

One little theater had an interior set built for one of 
the acts of The Honeymoon by Arnold Bennett. It is an 
English room in which the brown timbers show around the 
plastered panels. Had there been a need of economy this 
might have been painted upon the rear side, utilizing the 
necessary wooden frames as part of the room woodwork. 
One third of the set consists of a low piece about ten feet 
wide by eight high. Almost the entire upper portion of 
this, down to about twenty-four inches from the floor, is 
cut out. This opening is rilled at times by window sashes 
hinged at the sides. Behind it the eye of the spectator 
meets either the blue back-drop, a cyclorama, or some 
backing of foliage. At each side edge of this section is 
hinged another which has an upper line sharply rising until 
it reaches the ordinary ceiling height of a room, say, some 



122 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

twelve feet. All the other pieces belonging to this room 
are this latter height. The general effect is of a cozy, 
irregular English house, with quaint odd corners about it. 
Another advantage is that a small ceiling covers the larger 
part of the room. Variety can be secured by placing the 
doors at various points, by shifting the position of a right- 
angled projection which must eke out the three flap com- 
bination to make the wall long enough, by the hangings, and 
the furniture. Shortly after its appearance in The Honey- 




Cottage interior, with sloping ceiling over rear alcove. 



moon it served admirably for the villager's humble cottage 
in The Point of View by Eden Phillpotts. It also repre- 
sented the first scene of Hindle Wakes, and the one set in 
The Tragedy of Nan. The last time I saw it it had risen in 
dignity. Sobered by evening lighting, soft rugs, religious 
pictures and books, a library table, a reading lamp, a green 
crucifix upon the wall, and darkness outside, it was the 
Canon's study in the third act of Don by Rudolph Besier. 
Thus, within a few months this one small interior had served 
at least five different purposes. 

Interiors can be so easily decorated and beautified by 
hangings and furniture that they lend themselves more flex- 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 123 

ibly to differentiation than do exteriors. Some of the at- 
tempts of professionals with space, material, and experience 
at their command are so ludicrous that amateurs need not 
be discouraged at their shortcomings. The boldest pro- 
fessional instance of utilization of equipment, which I am 
trying to outline here for amateurs, I saw in New York in 
the winter of 19 19- 1920 in the stage settings of Acts I 
and III of a crude melodrama entitled The Storm. The 
scene is laid in a deep forest of the Canadian Northwest. 
Behind the mechanical tree trunks rising high above the 
eye line was hung the back-drop upon which more forest 
was painted except down the middle where a break was 
left in the trees to show the distant windings of a wood- 
land stream meeting far away the dull gray of the sky line. 
These two features of the landscape — sky and water — had 
to be in light colors to take the red glow of the onrushing 
forest fire, which supplies the real thrill of the uncouth 
woodland bedroom melodrama. Straight across the back- 
drop, not so clearly discernible among the darker colors of 
the trees, but as plain as black lines, stretched the horizon- 
tal ends of the seams of the canvas, which, unquestionably, 
painted on its front for some other play, had been resur- 
rected from the storehouse to be utilized again. Perhaps 
I should never have noticed this if the play had held my 
attention *nore closely, and if I had not myself used the 
rears of several back-drops in amateur productions. 

The first portion of any exterior, I should recommend, 
is the light blue sky back-drop already described. This 
should be as wide and as long as the outside limits of your 
space will permit. If you can afford two, so much the 



124 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

better. Have a straight one clear across the back of the 
stage. Have a curved one long enough to extend quite 
around past the line of sight at the edges of the proscenium 
opening. Unless these go extremely far above the stage 
you may have to add borders before them to mask the 
border lights, hanging scenery, tackle, etc. It is not abso- 
lutely necessary to stretch them tightly, as small folds 
sometimes produce agreeable and natural variations of tone 
in color and lighting, but the fewer folds there are the bet- 
ter the effect. If painted, the blue should not be a flat 
tone; let it reproduce the actual color of sky — light at the 
horizon, gradually deepening towards the zenith, as already 
described. Make it light enough to take such colors as 
you consider necessary. The effect of a tightly-stretched, 
evenly-colored canvas panel has been described already; 
it resembles a kalsomined kitchen wall. 

Before such a back-drop you may put practically any- 
thing you design, and light it exactly as nature or your 
fancy directs. 

Several years ago such a back-drop was made for a stage 
upon which was to be produced Love's Labor's Lost. To 
save money it was agreed to enact all the scenes in a single 
set. The artificiality, the balance, the preciosity of the 
comedy gave the cue for the scenery. At each side were 
set hinged wood- wings in balanced pairs. Those nearest 
the footlights showed clipped dark green hedges above a 
low border of pink and blue flowers. Above the hedge 
stretched outlined Normandy poplars and other garden 
trees, painted in flat tones. Only a few peeps of blue sky 
appeared in this first pair. The second pair of wings had 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 125 

more color. They were similar to the front pair in gen- 
eral design, but the greens were brighter, the foliage less 
dense. An additional splurge of brilliant color was fur- 
nished by painting several tall clumps of flowering bushes 
high above the level of the hedges which bordered these 
wings. Behind these, and extending until they almost met 
in the center were two hedges, along the base of which were 
repeated the pink and blue flowers from the wood- wings. 
Exactly behind the opening in the center, quite close to 
the bottom of the blue drop, was set a low profile piece 
suggesting the summit of a flight of steps leading down to 
lower terraces of this formal garden. Four terra cotta 
urns overrunning with flowers carried this effect further, 
but it was finally emphasized by silhouetted trees against 
the blue sky, lower than those in the foreground, evidently 
rising high from the next terrace below. Towards the 
conclusion of the play sunset changed the appearance, and 
finally moonlight and lantern light tinted the ending pic- 
turesquely. 

A few years later in The Comedy of Errors this back- 
drop and the silhouette trees and some of the wood-wings 
were requisitioned again. With the addition of a wall and 
gate, and the ends of a couple of houses, the open place in 
Ephesus already described in this chapter was set. 

That same year Twelfth Nigkt was staged by older per- 
formers. Some rocks used in an earlier season for Ulysses 
by Stephen Phillips served for the first scene. A group of 
forest trees — some wings, other forms for other places about 
the stage — were used for the Duke's grounds. Being rather 
heavy and sober — they were built first for the forest in 



126 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

which Sganarelle does so little work in Act I of Le Me- 
decin Malgre Lui — they bore out the tone of the Duke's 
sentimental rhapsodies and Viola's whimsical sallies on un- 
requited love. For Olivia's garden the scenery first pre- 
pared for Love's Labor's Lost, with its brightness and bal- 
ance made an adequate setting. Street scenes for Malvo- 
lio's return of the ring to Viola, and scenes between An- 
tony and Stephano took place in what had already been 
an " open place in Ephesus," in The Comedy of Errors. 
The drinking scene setting has already been discussed. 

Except when demands for realism curb originality, de- 
signers of sets for one-act plays have a wide field for the 
exercise of individual talents. There is always a risk in 
decorating the stage in a novel manner if the audience 
must gaze upon it for some three hours. In a short play, 
the danger of fatigue or of diverting attention is not so 
great, for the picture if it shock, startle, or offend, is be- 
fore the eyes for only some half hour or less. In a bill of 
three short plays one of them should be so different as to 
stand out boldly in contrast with the other two. It is in 
this securing of the right degree and kind of unusualness 
that the sympathetic decorative instincts of a producer or 
scene designer find their congenial scope. He must recall 
always that an audience is an entity sensitive to sugges- 
tion, willing to follow if properly led, open-minded to good 
intentions and results, but suspicious of tricks, hollowness, 
sham, insincerity. Beginning controllers of amateur groups 
will endeavor to seize the temper and temperament of their 
anticipated or actual public, and appreciating it at its real 
best — not its assumed best, strive to lead it to an accept- 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 127 

ance and approval of the most honest exemplification of 
theatrical art embellishment. 

It would be impossible even to hint at the possibilities 
of originality and variety in providing surroundings for 
short plays. It is beyond the power of one person to record 
the achievements of the past. No one spectator could at- 
tend all the performances in which new effects are being 
attempted, frequently achieved. If he could read every 
program for a year, study every photograph taken, ex- 
amine every light plot, he would still be unable to de- 
scribe, much less, explain and criticize, all the methods 
employed and the impressions registered. A comparative 
consideration of a few settings as actually carried out may 
help directors who want to try new methods but are hesi- 
tant before the uncertainty of their chances which hover 
between a possible success and a probable waste of time, 
energy, and what is far worse for amateurs, money. 

It will be instructive to look at a few descriptions pre- 
pared by dramatists, then see how their specifications have 
been carried out. I shall cite first two entirely different 
kinds of plays. 

" The room disclosed to view is an attractively fur- 
nished living-room or library. Well-chosen pictures are 
on the walls, good books are about. In the rear wall is 
the heavily curtained wide doorway. At the right is a wide 
window. In the middle of the wall which has been re- 
moved between the stage and the audience was an open 
fireplace. The andirons, logs, and hearth remain. At the 
left of the fireplace sits the Wife gazing into the red glow. 
At the right sits the Husband reading by the light from 



128 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the candle in an artistic holder upon a small table at some 
distance from his left shoulder. Its flame is hidden from 
the spectator's eye by a small screen." 

Notice that this setting is modern, realistic. It is such 
a room as may be found in most homes of refinement. The 
description is fairly definite. It is true that no particular 
color scheme is specified, but there is really no need for 
insistence upon such a detail. That can certainly be left 
to the taste of the producer. The next paragraph is the 
description by the director of the Little Theater of In- 
dianapolis of the setting he devised for this play. 

" Most of my staging was done with lights, of course 
having the fireplace, the andirons, fender, etc., at the foot- 
lights, the two chairs facing it, and a small mahogany table 
beside the Husband. I took the liberty of backing the 
Wife's chair with a big screen, over which was draped a 
geranium-colored silk shawl, which was the one spot of 
color in the scene. It formed a perfect background. The 
window was indicated simply by a flood of blue light from 
one side. The whole thing was concentrated into a twelve 
foot proscenium which served to localize the effect." 

The following is another illustration of the same kind 
of original interpretation, applied to Pokey by Philip Moel- 
ler. 

" The scene is in the neighborhood of the unpronounce- 
able Werowocomoco where Powhatan is chief. The entire 
beautiful legend is played on top and at the foot of a tall 
cliff on a plateau overlooking a valley. Far away spread 
the plains, and in the distance are the mountains on the 
horizon beyond Werowocomoco — if there are any mountains 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 129 

on the horizon in the distance beyond Werowocomoco . . . 
The scene should be wild and beautiful — beautiful with all 
the wildness of an unrestrained and savage school. It 
should be permeated with a J. Fenimore Cooperish au- 
tumnal atmosphere, because — though the piece is played 
during Spring and Summer — one always associates Indians 
with Autumn, and so we'll have the time autumnal." 

One production of this carried out the author's spec- 
ifications in quite an original manner. A cyclorama was 
hung across the rear and at the sides of the stage. Upon 
this was cast a strong yellow light which never varied in 
intensity throughout the two scenes. At the right of the 
stage as viewed from the audience was a cube shaped rock 
about five feet high upon which the action began between 
Rolfe and Pocahontas. This rock was colored a brilliant 
dark red. Upon the two sides visible to the spectators 
were painted large green flowers shaped like daisies, out- 
lined in wide black lines. Across the stage near the rear 
extended a profile line of low red boulders, red stumps of 
trees, and large flowers, all painted red, green, and black. 
From the rear of this shelf and from the rear of the table 
at the right of the stage there was supposed to be a sheer 
drop of hundreds of feet down the vertical cliff. For the 
second scene no tent was erected, as described in the printed 
play. A couple of tree branches were stuck up. Between 
them stretched a rope from which dangled a red flannel 
shirt and three long scalps. 

This colorful, rather conventionalized setting was en- 
tirely in keeping with the frivolous burlesquing intention 
of the play itself. 



130 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Sometimes a clever masking of the space above by some 
device utilized at the front of the stage will save a great 
deal of otherwise necessary scenery. For some plays this 
can be erected, for others not. 

In a performance of The Rising of the Moon by Lady 
Gregory, I saw two wooden posts standing close to the 
curtain line. Resting on them were boards rising vertically 
as though to meet a roof above. To right and left irregular 
piles of barrels and boxes masked the side spaces. Further 
back were coils of ropes, and a couple of anchors. Some 
.square timbers laid parallel with the footlights, and a cou- 
ple of round posts indicated the edge of the wharf. Around 
the entire set hung the cyclorama in dark blue to suggest 
night sky. The effect was that the spectator was under 
such a shed as usually covers wharves, and was looking 
beyond that shed to the end of the wharf and further 
across the water to the dark blue sky. Everything except 
the cyclorama — for the nautical details could be varied — 
could be borrowed or easily built. Except the cyclorama, 
there was no scenery, in the usual sense of that term. 

In a performance of Altruism, by Carl Ettinger, the 
quais of the Seine were represented. Hanging from above 
the proscenium opening and sloping back was a striped 
awning above the tables of a cafe terrace. Strips of this 
same awning at the right and left completely masked the 
sides. The entrance to the cafe was through these side 
curtains. Towards the back, as though across the street, 
a slightly raised platform was the pavement. The low 
parapet extending across stage was the stone wall beyond 
and below which flowed the Seine. A few profiles of build- 





Photograph by Kajiwara 

Above : Pomander Walk, by Louis N. Parker. Cen- 
tral High School, Washington. 



Below: Pierrot's Christmas, by Bessier and Monti. 
Designed by Lawrence Ewald. The Artists' Guild, 
Saint Louis. 




Photograph toy MeBride Studio 




Above : Prunella, by Laurence Housman and Gran- 
ville Barker. University of Washington, Seattle. 



Designed by John Ely. 



Below: The Chinese Lantern, by Laurence Housman. 
Central High School, Saint Louis. 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 131 

ings on the opposite side of the river were backed by the 
blue cyclorama. The whole stage was bathed in the bril- 
liant yellow of the Parisian afternoon sun. The general 
effect was perfect, yet the contributing elements were 
simple. 

Exactly this same kind of pictorial effect was secured 
in a production of The Tents of the Arabs, by Lord Dun- 
sany. The stage setting for this well-known short play re- 
quires a gate beyond which lies the desert into which the 
tired king goes with the wild child of its distances. I have 
seen a half dozen different conceptions of this, but only 
one which in any way made emphatic the contrast between 
the city and the level sands. Half way back from the 
footlights the city wall was erected, in the middle of which 
was the gate leading the gaze beyond it across the track- 
less expanse to the blue depths of the cyclorama. Just be- 
hind the proscenium arch a few brilliant strips of oriental 
cloths were fastened. Their other ends were fastened to 
the top of the city wall. Sweeping in graceful curves from 
front to rear they made a grateful shade in which passers- 
by naturally paused to chat before stepping out into the 
merciless heat of the unshaded sands. The correspond- 
ing dimming of light on the forestage also marked the 
heightening of the yellow glare beyond the archway of the 
wide gate. In this arrangement, as in the previously de- 
scribed ones, there was actually only a little scenery, in 
the strict sense, required to set the stage. The wall was 
the only constructed part. A couple of low platforms 
served as steps to take persons over its sill. For the im- 
pression made, this setting was extremely economical. 



132 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

It would probably be a mistake to utilize this device too 
frequently, but it will save money and trouble in many 
cases. Somewhat like it is another forestage treatment 
serving somewhat the same purpose. 

In the second scene of The King and Queen, by Tagore, 
the courtyard of a palace was shown. Most of the stage 
was bathed in brilliant yellow light upon cream-colored 
walls. The dazzling effect of this was enhanced by having 
no footlights; in fact there were no lights from the front. 
Just behind the curtain line was hung a silhouette of three 
oriental archways, so that spectators in the auditorium felt 
that they were in a darkened alcove, peering out into the 
broad sunlight where the story was being enacted. A 
slightly mysterious effect was added by having the open 
archways covered with gauze which mellowed the light 
without detracting from its brilliance. The solid portion 
of the wall above the arches masked nearly all of the space 
above and behind them. Only a few usual wood-wings 
were required to suggest the garden at both sides. By 
keeping this foliage well off-stage attention was kept from 
it and centered upon the characters. In this stage setting 
as in others already discussed there was secured a maxi- 
mum of effect at a minimum of expense and effort. 

A few other uses of draperies in connection with regular 
scenery may contain hints for adoptions in similar instances. 
One of the Diminutive Dramas by Maurice Baring, The 
Aulis Difficulty, calls simply for " Agamemnon's Tent at 
Aulis." On one stage a back-drop and wings of a forest 
were set, then there was caught up in the middle a great 
square of brightly colored stuff which, raised to some 



CREATING THE STAGE PICTURE 133 

twenty feet above stage, could be draped back in realistic 
representation of a Greek warrior's tent. Had there been 
no back-drop of forest trees, the tent could easily have been 
drawn to the sides until no back-drop would have been 
necessary, or the regular standby of the blue cyclorama 
would have answered the requirement. 

In interiors of whimsical or fanciful decorations, drap- 
eries will often take the place of the usual flat ceilings or 
of the inexcusable painted borders. In an amateur revue 
I saw the entire stage draped beautifully for a dance num- 
ber by using a single large cloth of black and white squares. 
It had been fastened to the usual drop lines, three across 
the front far enough from the edge of the material to allow 
a border just behind the top of the proscenium opening, 
then along a line which let enough hang in irregular folds 
to reach the stage at the rear. In this pavilion-like space 
a brightly-costumed group performed an unusual dance. 

The same scheme can be used in a room for certain kinds 
of plays. In Whims, the title under which the Washing- 
ton Square Players acted Caprice, by Alfred de Musset, the 
walls were covered with pleated blue silk, while the ceiling 
was a dome of the same material caught up into a rosette 
in the center. With the French costumes of a century ago, 
the effect was charming. 

Exactly the same thing was done by Winthrop Ames in 
his production a few seasons ago of Pierrot the Prodigal. 
In the second act Phrynette's boudoir in Paris was taste- 
fully decorated in filmy chiffon, with a tent ceiling drawn 
up into a center rosette. 

The ideas here suggested can be carried out with a sav~ 



i 3 4 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

ing of money but they entail extreme care in designing, per- 
fect skill in coloring, and exquisite taste in execution. 
There is the nicest line in stage matters between simplicity 
and skimpiness, between art and decoration, between color 
and gaudiness, between richness and show. To overstep 
the allowable limit and pass into the cheap imitation spells 
failure in the amateur realm. Endless experiment, pains- 
taking consideration, ceaseless adapting, ingenious inno- 
vations, form the experience and develop the knowledge 
from which come later the surest successes, even when 
they are the most audacious. 



CHAPTER VIII 
COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 

In discussing the need for economy which nearly every 
little theater administration must exercise it was stated that 
by avoiding all costume plays during an entire season the 
expenditure of a great deal of money should be avoided. 
One director has written me that he uses no costume plays. 
So the practice must be feasible, and acceptable to some 
audiences. The main objection which may be urged against 
such a restriction is that an entire season of plays with- 
out some inclusion of beauty, color, picturesqueness, local 
color, romance, the historic past, or the distant present, must 
become decidedly monotonous to the eye. How monoton- 
ously familiar all the actors must get to look to the regular 
patrons! Not many groups are so consistently exclusive 
of one of the most fascinating theater arts — the appeal by 
means of costume. 

As a matter of fact no avoidance of any kind of play 
will eliminate totally the need for some costumes, for no 
selection can be made in which all the performers can sim- 
ply walk on in their ordinary wearing apparel. More parts 
have to be dressed than the opposite. By adhering to mod- 
ern dramas it is quite possible to get costumes by borrow- 
ing, or making, or concocting, or combining them from 
personal effects. A farmer needs as appropriate a costume 
as a Spanish matador. Only the former's garb can be 

135 



136 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

foraged for, while the latter 's would have to be hired. There 
is so charming an effect from beautiful costumes that I 
believe no director will voluntarily cut himself off from 
their reasonable use. 

Costumes upon a stage are regarded in a different man- 
ner from any others. First of all their wearers are set at 
a distance from the spectators, they are marked off within 
a definite space, they are described as being " in the pic- 
ture." The frame indicates the demarkation between them 
and the beholders. Only in conventionally conceived exer- 
cises or frankly artificial and romantic forms of drama 
should that demarkation be eradicated. The stage is the 
stage because it is not the audience. The latter can be 
made to share in all the stage carries by the transfer of 
emotional appeal or intellectual stimulation. Costumed 
figures are raised upon the platform above the usual line of 
vision. This at times determines the cut of a gown. For 
instance, a short skirt always appears shorter when viewed 
from the house. Secondly , the costumes are displayed 
under an intensified, and usually colored light. This will 
determine choice of colors. In his Essays published first 
in 1597, practical Francis Bacon commented upon such 
details in the producing of Masques. " The colors that 
show best by candle-light are white, carnation, and a kind 
of sea-water green. ... As for rich embroidery, it is lost 
and not discerned." Tests made of colors under daylight 
and white electric light will not lead to satisfactory results 
upon the stage itself. Failure to secure the proper shades 
and combinations in bought material has induced most cos- 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 137 

tume workers of keen artistic sense to dye their own stuffs 
for every production. 

Modern costumes for women alone admit of picturesque 
and colorful accentuation. The effect of the gown of an 
actress upon an audience cannot always be justly estimated 
in advance, but it can be considered carefully. Personal 
preference may have to be corrected by general impression. 
In not every play can every woman in the cast be allowed 
to look her best. There must be no clashes of colors or 
modes. There must be no effects to neutralize or kill 
others. When elements of the charm of the stage picture 
need not be considered there must be an appropriateness 
of garb to characterization. This emphasis of the inward 
spiritual nature by the outward and visible sign cannot al- 
ways be left to the taste of the individual actress. Too 
many of them — in amateur circles, at least — look upon 
acting as an opportunity to " dress up." The best looking, 
the newest, the most fashionable gowns are offered at dress 
rehearsal for praise. It is difficult to make some histrionic 
aspirants realize that the best acting may be done in drab, 
unattractive garments. Absence of color and fit and style 
may be more needed than their prominence. Detail of 
paraphernalia may add to the characterization but spoil 
some other aspect of the presentation. One actress in a 
smart English comedy carried a chatelaine which suited the 
role perfectly, only it jangled so loudly at the slightest 
movement that it drowned most of her short speeches. 
Overdressing a part may be as vexatious as wrong dressing. 

For humor the underlying principles of costume design 



138 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

should be contrast, incongruity, exaggeration, increasing in 
degree directly as the material of the play recedes from 
realism and contemporaneousness. 

In real life the dictum is oft repeated that " it's not the 
clothes which make the difference but the manner in which 
they are worn." This is more patently true on the stage. 
Some performers are physically and temperamentally unable 
to wear costumes of certain kinds properly. An actress, 
trained in poetic, romantic, and character roles may never be 
able to look right in ordinary dress. The tragedy queen 
may try to wear modern sport clothes in the same manner, 
with fatal results for the effect of a role. The hoyden may 
show through an evening creation. 

Nearly all these considerations apply with equal force 
to men. To many a suit for stage wear is something which 
" doesn't belong." They seem to have no knack of throw- 
ing themselves into their clothes. They seem always to 
have had the clothes on only for the last ten minutes, in- 
stead of having worn them regularly. Evening clothes are 
extremely dangerous. On the stage men should be at per- 
fect ease in them. Too frequently they show exactly how 
uncomfortable they actually are. Even when they act as 
butlers and waiters they miss the carelessness which comes 
from continuous livery, and instead of forgetting that such 
suits are working clothes, they are as careful of them as 
though they were masters and guests instead of servants. 
Incidentally seldom are the suits of butlers and waiters on 
the stage slovenly, ill-fitting, and spotted enough. 

As Bacon truthfully said, certain meticulous details are 
lost by the distance between the characters and the spec- 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 139 

tators. In military costumes not many of the audience will 
notice either the presence or absence of such things as tips 
on the patent leathers of a British officer. But they will 
notice if an American laboring man in rough shirt and 
overalls wears well-shaped and straight heeled shoes. Most 
inconsistencies crop out in character parts. The farmer 
buys blue jeans from the dry-goods store, then wears them 
with all the shelf creases in them for the first time at the 
dress rehearsal. He had better hang them out in the rain, 
kick them about the cellar, and dust the back porch off with 
them, then shake them out and put them on for the play. 

Just as amateurs are "likely to neglect the mounting of 
a realistic drama, so they are likely to be careless about 
costuming it; yet there is as much chance for artistic en- 
deavor in the every-day as in the distant; and there are 
many more dangers of serious faults — serious because so 
painfully apparent to the critical audience. Yet art di- 
rectors will continue to revel in the costume play. 

The best single, comment made by any dramatist about 
costumes (in the ordinary sense of that word) for one of 
his poetic romances was set down by Rostand as a direction 
for designers who work with Les Romanesques ; " The cos- 
tumes may be anything, provided they are beautiful." In 
modern plays the characters themselves may help more or 
less in providing their own costumes. In fanciful, his- 
torical, romantic, plays there should be one directing and 
designing head to produce harmony, balance, gracefulness, 
and beauty. 

There is always danger in hiring costumes from a pro- 
fessional costumer by merely sending a list of characters 



140 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

and sizes. Even though his stock be large, it may be en- 
gaged in advance by other demands, and the presence of 
two or three incongruous dresses or suits in an otherwise 
harmonious combination will spoil the effect. The risk is 
lessened if the members of the costume committee can 
examine the stock, select exactly what will serve, and then 
can insist that the chosen articles be the ones delivered. 
Ordering from a distance multiplies risk a hundredfold. No 
time remains for changes between dress rehearsal and per- 
formances. For this reason the plan of having dress re- 
hearsals earlier than the day. of the performance is urged 
in this book. If you have ever worked with a large cast 
you know how many shoes will not fit, how many pairs of 
stockings have not arrived, how many belts have no buckles, 
how many doublets no hooks and eyes. 

The best stocked costumer is certain to have a better 
array for certain periods than others. Since our greatest 
dramatic period is Elizabethan, he will be more than likely 
to be able to costume a Shakespeare comedy adequately. 
In the history plays he may not be so fortunate. When a 
director, working with Moliere's plays, tries to find suitable 
costumes at the professional's he is likely to be disappointed. 
The 1 660- 1 700 period is so little represented in our dramas 
and upon our stages that costumes little in request are 
made up in restricted variety and small numbers. In 
France, the exact opposite is the case. 

Among theatrical conventions the dressing of Shakes- 
pearean roles has become almost a fixed one. Granville 
Barker upset this convention in two of his productions. 
The Lyric Theater Company, of Hammersmith, costumed 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 141 

As You Like It in early fifteenth century style, had all the 
material specially dyed and made up, substituted single 
brilliant colors for the usual elaborate ornamentation, and 
made an artistic success even if they did startle the patrons 
of the Memorial Theater at Stratford-on-Avon. As a mat- 
ter of fact, this play allows the widest variety of individual 
conceptions for its beautiful appearance. 

What shall be done about Macbeth? At no time has 
any American production emphasized so strongly by dress 
the Scottish element of the tragedy as the New Shakespeare 
Company's production at Stratford-on-Avon which I saw 
in 1920. In essence, this style of garb is quite appropriate, 
for the story is Scotch. Additional recognition is given this 
by the announcement that one group of Celtic Players in 
the United States intends to produce it as part of their 
theatric propaganda. 

When Shakespeare placed his scenes in Renaissance Italy 
he made the costuming easy. But when he wrote The 
Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night he left problems for 
the modern designer or choosers of costumes. How Greek 
should be the investiture of the former? Many producers 
compromise by a conventionalized Italo- Greco style which 
is in no sense historical, though it may be picturesque. 
Twelfth Night is more difficult because more familiar and 
more often produced. How can Ilyrian styles be suggested? 
Again our dependence on Renaissance Italy is apparent in 
the usual stage pictures, with, however, a recognition of 
strangeness in the garments of Viola and Sebastian. A 
bolero jacket, a turban, a short pleated skirt, knee-high leg- 
gings, are the usual marks of these two characters. 



142 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Many a modern designer feels tempted to discard all such 
conventions and, using only the play and his own ideas, to 
evolve a novel, picturesque result by absolutely untried 
means. In this opinion is the basis of the newer stylistic, 
decorative methods of costuming Shakespeare. 

Mere originality should be corrected by supervision or 
knowledge or common sense. A recent well patronized pro- 
duction of Hamlet gave most of its spectators the shock of 
their lives when Ophelia appeared in the flower and mad 
scenes. Immemorially the actress during this act has worn 
white. This color has a real dramatic value at this part 
of the action, because it emphasizes her youth, her unhappy 
love, and her sad ending. Yet in this production the star 
appeared in a long, plain, green gown, which looked like 
nothing so much as a child's long nightgown which per- 
sisted in getting under her feet. I do not know what ex- 
planation was ever given for such a choice of color. Per- 
haps it might have been urged that green fitted better into 
the general color scheme. It would have been better to 
admit the apparent truth. The actress was too large and 
plump to look like afflicted Ophelia. As size is accentuated 
by white, this more subdued, but entirely inappropriate 
shade was used. I have seen performances of Julius Ccesar 
in which — since the major part of the company's repertory 
was Italian comedy and English history — the actresses wore 
Renaissance gowns, entirely out of keeping with Roman 
togas and short broad swords. In spite of Shakespeare's 
direct evidence to the fact that in Twelfth Night, Maria 
must be dressed so much like Olivia that Viola seeing them 
together cannot pick the " lady of the house," I have seen 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 143 

Maria garbed almost like a maid-servant. In fact, in one 
production, the first scene in which Maria appears was set 
near the kitchen, and she was engaged in rolling out dough, 
from which she later sportively puffed the flour into Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek's face! 

All the foregoing instances are from professional produc- 
tions which fact makes them all the more disturbing, as 
they may have served as wrong models to students, per- 
formers, and directors of Shakespeare's plays. 

Amateurs, with all their intended care for details, allow 
unbelievable defects to persist. In The Playboy of the 
Western World I do not believe that Christy should dress 
for the donkey race in a brilliant silk striped jockey suit. 
True, Synge writes a line which may be so interpreted. I 
did not see the Abbey Players present this in America, so 
I cannot quote them as authority. But I don't believe that 
in the district suggested by that play there would be a 
professional jockey's suit for a stranger. Puttees might be 
borrowed, and perhaps a different shirt. The adoring girls 
might decorate it with nosegays and ribbons. But I believe 
the character should remain in the picture of Ireland, and 
not look like the hero of The Kentucky Derby. In a play 
from the Hungarian, a crowd of neighbors rush into a house 
after an early morning tragedy. The director probably told 
the performers to go to the local costumer's to get some 
Hungarian costumes. They did. Aroused from their beds, 
they rushed to their neighbor's home, and stood in the 
increasing light of early morning, dressed in brilliant colors, 
brightly embroidered shawls and headdresses, looking like 
figures from a music box or members of a musical comedy 



144 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

chorus. They should have donned old petticoats, and 
wrapped dark shawls around their shoulders and heads; the 
men should have worn half-laced boots, or slippers, shirts 
should have hung out and flapped open, hair should have 
been unkempt. There was no fitness in a single suit or 
dress. 

Photographs of an all-girl cast in Twelfth Night show 
Maria dressed correctly enough so far as her gown is con- 
cerned but beneath her skirt show modern heavy high walk- 
ing boots. In the same cast Sir Andrew Aguecheek wears 
a well-made, perfectly fitting suit, but his (her) feet are 
encased in a modern pair of girl's pumps. Both Viola and 
Sebastian are dressed too effeminately to be acceptable to 
the audience. All the other characters are well groomed, 
except that the girls' hair has made their heads so large 
that the plumed hats do not sit upon them properly or 
safely. 

Besides the picturesqueness of the past a director may 
include the color of the distant. Every land has its national 
garb which has found its place in drama. Japanese and 
Chinese plays seemed to have disappeared from both pro- 
fessional and amateur stages. Just now they are back 
again. The Mikado is delighting thousands and The Lady 
of the Lamp carried on the influence spread by The 
Willow Tree, The Son Daughter, and East Is West. 
Amateurs have always liked the settings and costumes of 
the flowery kingdoms, but the phenomenal impressiveness 
of Bushido under all its titles — Matsuo and The Pine Tree 
— has emboldened them to give rein to that enthusiasm. 

Looking in the other direction we can cite long lists of 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 145 

plays influencing a different oriental style of costuming. 
It is not easy to ascribe definite beginnings for such intro- 
ductions or repetitions, but I believe this phase of costum- 
ing came to us first in Sumurum. The more gorgeously 
spectacular Chu Chin Chow, Aphrodite, Mecca, and Afgar 
have continued it. Amateurs swayed by all the glorious 
sensuousness of such color have expressed it in the always- 
popular fantasies and romances of Lord Dunsany. 

For a long time Greek plays were garbed more or less 
alike. If color were used it was likely to be some pale or 
pastel shade; but white was almost general, at least for 
women's draperies. Then there seemed to be a sudden 
change from the subdued and the quiet to the loud and 
the garish. Old Greek stories were treated in a fairly 
irreverent manner for comic effect, partly, I should say, by 
imitation of French methods. Then the great classic 
tragedies were approached, not from the viewpoint of lit- 
erary masterpieces above all human interest, but as dramas 
written to be acted and embodying stories of human rela- 
tions. Independent producers in America, in England, in 
Central Europe, revolutionized completely the method of 
producing Greek material. Hoffmanstal rewrote the Electra, 
Strauss set it to music, and Reinhardt applied " circus " 
methods to its staging. Ample space and large audiences in 
the open-air stadiums and theaters called for stronger treat- 
ment than had been dared, and the amazing discovery was 
made that classic tragedy need not appeal only to anti- 
quarian scholars. Like all good drama it can be made uni- 
versally appealing. 

Related as closely to costuming as costuming is related 



146 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

to characterization is make-up. Like costuming it depends 
in its nature almost entirely upon lighting. Change the 
lighting of a scene and every make-up on stage will appear 
different. When amber replaced white light on the pro- 
fessional stage actors had to learn to apply and combine 
colors differently to secure the same effects as before. The 
varying intensity of light in different theaters will empha- 
size or kill certain kinds of make-up. The dazzling bright- 
ness of the large commercial stage will not serve as a test 
of facial change upon the smaller stage of the intimate 
theater. Distance between actor and spectator is so re- 
duced in little theaters that make-up must be laid on with 
a sparing and delicate hand. Even in intelligent commer- 
cial productions there is a great deal less make-up now 
than there was formerly. Moderation of effect in acting 
has induced moderation in character advertising — as the 
change of features might be designated. Just as the villain 
no longer always wears patent leather shoes and flicks his 
cigarette ashes about the carpet, so no longer does he have 
to display a silky black mustache and a shifty eye. Add 
to all these reasons for change the fact that little theater 
audiences are " in the know " and it becomes apparent that 
more refined and successful results are demanded of 
make-up. 

The essential principles and rudimentary effects are so 
simple that a beholder wonders at many of the faces he 
sees. In spite of the opportunity to observe good, bad, 
and indifferent facial decorations on the street, in the cars, 
and across dinner-tables, many amateur actresses make 
glaring blunders when they appear at dress rehearsal. Red 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 147 

— because they consider it the prime beautifier — is used too 
lavishly. It mounts too high, or spreads too low. Or it is 
not blended properly, so that it looks no more like " beauty 
truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and 
cunning hand laid on " than are the perfect circles painted 
on doll's faces like the glow of healthy children. Discus- 
sions of exactly how to secure effects in make-up do not 
fall within the scope of this book, but comment on some 
of the crudities does. Many an actress acting on habitual 
practice " powders her nose " just before she enters the 
scene, with the disconcerting result that the intensified 
brightness strikes the high light on her nose making it 
appear like nothing in the world so much as a piece of 
white dough or putty. Her chin may show the same ghastly 
prominence. Then there are others, perhaps they are the 
same, who spread red over the entire lip. Few mouths can 
stand this heavy outlining across their full width, and then 
appear small and winning in speech. The misuse of black 
is almost as frequent. Eyes are made to appear like burnt 
holes in sheets. I wonder if in a little theater it is ever 
necessary, except for character parts, to put melted cos- 
metic on the eye-lashes, making each hair like a ball tipped 
spoke, or to color the entire upper lid dark blue so that 
every time it is lowered it looks diseased. 

In earlier times make-up hardened into set forms for 
regularly recognized types of play characters. Heavy 
accents were placed upon every trait to convey a classi- 
fication to an audience. There are still reminiscences of 
this indicated by photographs of some little theater produc- 
tions, in the Britisher with the long mustache and the 



1 48 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Frenchman with the goatee. Modern producers have passed 
from such crude labels. Today in the appearance of an 
actor, the keynote is characterization, not type; personality, 
not the part. The worst violation of such a consideration 
which I have ever seen was the first entrance of Christy in 
The Playboy of the Western World. Synge describes him 
as " very tired and frightened and dirty," but this actor 
appeared with a beautiful and fresh juvenile make-up. He 
was the leading man, and he refused point-blank to appear 
with any other face. Naturally this killed any chance for 
the exaggeration in the play of the power of his deed to 
arouse the admiration of the people. His good looks would 
have done that at the first glance. The wrong make-up 
spoiled both the part and the characterization. 

To secure models for imitation the best method is to ob- 
serve carefully all the faces you see about you. Physiog- 
nomy is not an exact science, so definite features do not 
in reality indicate disposition and character. But we 
have come to associate certain physical traits with men- 
tal or temperamental characteristics, and a recognition 
of this — not a slavish adherence to it — is usually a help in 
acting. It is impossible to delineate much of a person's 
character by means of his features; it is best to have 
make-up reinforce the physical attributes, merely suggest- 
ing probable disposition, then depend upon the acting for 
the projection of the person's real character. 

Naturally men need and use make-up on the stage less 
frequently and less consistently than women. Unless the 
role requires a radical change in age or appearance a man 
may be able by his stage business and acting to simulate 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 149 

the difference. If his features are pliable and his powers 
of facial control well developed he may succeed to a sur- 
prising degree. The one detail over which he can never 
exercise modifying control to a large extent is the hair on 
his head and face. If a character in a play has to be 
whiskered he must either start months in advance to grow 
the hirsute appendage — a proof of devotion to art which no 
amateur working every day could attempt — or he must stick 
the bushy mass on with spirit gum. Beards and mus- 
taches are not very difficult to make look real if they are 
properly blended. Notice the hair upon any man's face 
and you will see plainly how it varies in color and thick- 
ness. Practically never — except when dyed — are hair and 
beard or mustache of exactly the same shade. In securing 
this replication of natural difference lies the whole art and 
difficulty of this phase of make-up. More than the mus- 
tache the beard needs skilful manipulation for both shading 
and thickness. So few stage beards look as though they 
have grown upon the actor's face. The worst I have seen 
recently is the pair worn by the villain and the hero in the 
London production by Arthur Bouchier of At the Villa 
Rose. The latter's appearance in the disguise of the last 
act was as funny as intentional travesty. The disguise in 
real life would not have deceived any person. 

Wigs under most conditions are likely to cause uneasiness 
on both sides of the footlights. An ideal condition would 
be to have among the acting group a man who would look 
almost exactly like the character to be presented and also 
able to best act that role. Then the use of most wigs could 
be abandoned. Worst of all are the bald domes or half 



150 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

bald heads. The best fitting bald front will never tightly 
cling to the forehead of the amateur for whom it has been 
hired. The grease paint may bring the false and the real 
skin close together in color, and a few horizontal lines across 
both will make the yawning juncture look like a wrinkle, 
but there will still be the open space which no amount of 
coloring or drawing can entirely close. Fortunate is the 
company which has among its excellent actors a few young, 
middle-aged, and elderly men whose make-up is complete 
as soon as they take off their hats. 

If a professional make-up man is hired his stock of paints, 
powders, and wigs will in all probability be better than the 
aggregate of the private possessions of the performers. 
When hiring is not feasible or desirable there may be one 
member whose skill or interest lies in such exercises. This 
work must be subjected to the inspection of the director 
exactly as the costuming. If he has his mind on all the 
details he will have given, long before the dress rehearsal, 
specifications of make-up for every character. He will dic- 
tate changes based upon observation of the performers made 
from the auditorium. To insure celerity every performer 
should put on his own make-up. He may have his own 
make-up box, or the organization may own a well-stocked 
one. To have every actor do everything for himself comes 
closest to professional practice, but when the result does 
not justify the responsibility there should be no hesitancy 
in insisting upon a surer and safer procedure. A mistaken 
make-up may be as false a note in a performance as a mis- 
take in casting. It is one of the most disturbing of the petty 
annoyances of the theater. Practice will make perfect in 





Photograph by Moffett 

Plays by J. M. Barrie. 



Above: Quality Street. Hathaway-Brown School. 
Cleveland. An all-girl cast. 



Below: Rosalind. Hickox Studio Players, Chicago. 





















.- 




is 




9 




1 | 






J 








Pv.^Sflj 
















Photographs by Kaufmann Fabry Co. 

The Hickox Studio Players, Chicago 



Above : The Storm, by John Drinkwater. 



Below : Everybody's Husband, by Gilbert Cannan. 



COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP 151 

this as in all things, but a few serious failures during the 
apprenticeship may be costly. It would be good for every 
amateur actor to take several lessons from a professional 
make-up artist, for there are tricks of ground colors, blend- 
ing, shading, indicating age, eradicating features, empha- 
sizing them, modifying them, which may be speedily learned. 
After the manual parts have been mastered the training 
can be pursued at practically all times. Every illustration 
the actor sees, every photograph he notices, every painting 
he observes, will contain models which he can photograph 
upon his imagination for later reproduction. Elsewhere in 
this book the remark of Sir Frank R. Benson describing one 
of the actor's essential abilities is quoted: — " he must be a 
human kodak." Nowhere is this so plainly true as in this 
matter of making-up. 

While pictures will help him to fix certain marks, colors, 
lines in his mind, there is- a wider and more fascinating 
field of observation for reproduction — human nature in all 
its myriad living forms around him. Let the actor study 
human beings continually, let him peruse every character- 
ful countenance, let him analyze the reality of the faces and 
hands he sees, and then by successful reproduction and 
adaptation of them he will inject into his own impersona- 
tions an appearance of individual actualness. 



CHAPTER IX 
LIGHTING 

If a person has his own theater fully equipped he is able 
to make any experiments he pleases to secure novel effects 
of setting, costuming, and lighting — always provided, of 
course, that he has enough money to pay for all his failures, 
and time enough to experiment until he gets exactly what 
he wants. When we read the accounts by Mr. Belasco we 
are envious of the chance to try for weeks the working 
out of the best plan for showing the floating souls in the 
last act of The Darling of the Gods. We marvel at the 
capital which permitted discarding all the painted canvas 
which had been devised at first for the scene, and the sub- 
stitution of hangings tinted by colored lights. What ama- 
teur organization can afford to do such things? 

The amateur producer is always at a disadvantage of 
time, equipment, and money in such matters. Working 
upon a small stage, in cramped spaces, with few lighting 
facilities, for an audience predisposed to be over-critical, 
rehearsing at odd times persons otherwise regularly em- 
ployed, for a few performances at most, is there any won- 
der that his effects are so far below his ideals? Should we 
not wonder that his results are as effective as they are? 

With all the odds against him the amateur producer has 
made the most notable advances in aims and methods, and 

152 



LIGHTING 153 

produced the most arresting novelties in such matters as 
lighting. 

It is almost axiomatic that no stage upon which amateur 
productions are offered is adequately equipped. If there 
are dimmers there are usually not enough for all circuits. 
If there are any they are usually the old-fashioned cir- 
cular kind with few points of contact so that the lights 
jump up and down instead of increasing or diminishing 
evenly. An experimental electrician may even be forced to 
construct his own dimmers of earthenware crocks contain- 
ing a salt solution into which he lowers one end of the wire 
to carry the full current when it reaches the other at the 
bottom of the solution. But light from these is uncertain 
in intensity, the apparatus is cumbersome, the operator 
has to be reliable. 

At times, the opposite of the foregoing is true. The light- 
ing equipment of a small theater may be quite complete — 
but so complicated that only one or two persons ever master 
its intricacies well enough to use it satisfactorily. 

No one can lay down absolutely just what the lighting 
equipment of any amateur stage should be, for at any time 
some play or spectacle may require a detail quite unfore- 
seen but which the electrician must be able to provide. The 
one great feature of the lighting arrangements as of all 
other stage appliances should be adaptability. It is pos- 
sible, however, to suggest certain desirable things upon 
which to base a beginning of satisfactory lighting. 

There should be footlights. Whether they should always 
be used is another matter. But they should be provided, 
for it is as ridiculous to say they should never be used as 



154 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

it is to insist that they should be used for every perform- 
ance. The footlights should be on as many different cir- 
cuits as possible, each with its separate switch and if- pos- 
sible, its separate dimmer. Three different colors — red, 
blue, amber — are the best combination. If each of these 
can be split so that one half of each section to the right 
and left of stage center can be manipulated separately, there 
will be chance for more effects, but this last is not an es- 
sential. When blue lights are used in connection with 
others, about twice as many blue bulbs are required as of 
each of the other colors. White lights have almost entirely 
disappeared from the modern theater, yet in some cases they 
may be better than amber. In such uses bulbs can be 
replaced in the sockets for special effects. 

The placing of footlights is a very important matter. I 
know of several auditoriums in which because^ of some 
transient interest in pageantry, or some scheme to link the 
audience with the performers, permanent aprons or fore- 
stages were built and permanent footlights placed along the 
front edge, yards away from the line of the proscenium 
opening. The result of this is that when a performer steps 
into this fore-space, he is badly lighted by too strong a 
glow from the floor — an entirely unnatural source of strong 
light. To counteract this glaring error of construction, in 
one auditorium temporary wooden frames are erected at 
the rear of the first floor from which high power nitrogen 
bulbs with reflectors looking like dishpans project strong 
glares upon the stage. This makeshift imitation of the use 
of the spot or flood light in the professional theater is never 
satisfactory, for spectators stumble against these unsightly 



LIGHTING 155 

contraptions, they are not easily controlled, and worst of 
all, they cast strong glares upon the backs of the occupants 
of at least the first ten rows of seats. This forestage also 
draws amateur actors out from the picture, for scenery has 
to be set behind the proscenium arch only. There is always 
a different intensity from the lights behind the upper edge 
of the proscenium arch, so that different parts of the stage 
show, for no reason, different intensities of lighting. The 
addition of the forestage in this instance has practically 
ruined the stage. 

In the second hall — a high school auditorium — the matter 
has been more easily remedied. When the forestage is used 
the moveable footlights are placed along its front edge. To 
neutralize the light from them a corresponding set — alike in 
color, number, switches — was placed upon the stage side of 
a deep ceiling beam extending straight across the house, far 
above the heads of the audience. By careful adjusting of 
reflectors and shades the light from this border strikes the 
stage just behind the footlights. The various series are 
controlled from the same switchboard. When the forestage 
is not used the footlights extend across it not at its edge, 
but just in front of the curtain line. Then their light is 
matched, as is usual, from the first border, and the house 
ceiling beam row is not used at all. 

The footlights of the first hall are permanent ones sunk 
in a curving trough, so that modifications cannot be 
employed. Fixity of equipment has reduced the utility of 
that stage. 

Unless the footlights are built with professional design 
and connections amateur stages are better off with moveable 



156 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

sets. These may be of many different designs. Troughs 
may be covered by board sections, making the whole stage 
level. Other devices swing on pivots, so that the lights 
turn down and the boards swing into place as flooring. In 
designing any special frames or reflectors remember that 
more light comes from the sides of an incandescent bulb 
than from the round end. If you are going to place foot- 
lights upon the stage floor consider the line of vision from 
the front rows. If the front of your stage descends to the 
house floor in a series of three or four steps, you can place 
your footlights upon the top step. Make it possible to intro- 
duce corrections before finally installing. For instance, be- 
ware of back reflection into the auditorium from the ver- 
tical step. This would light the ceiling near the stage. It 
might cast shadows on the lower parts of the performers' 
bodies. Close in the ends of such footlights so that the 
side walls are not illuminated. You will be amazed at how 
much light can filter around corners. 

When amateurs can discuss nothing else about their plays 
they can always raise the question, " foots or no foots? " 
Those who insist upon footlights are always informed by 
their opponents that Mr. Belasco discarded them long ago, 
and that recently Mr. Hopkins has been using an overhead 
system. To this the defenders of footlights will answer quite 
truthfully that many plays of the former producer are most 
inappropriately lighted, and that the system of the latter 
has received a great deal of criticism from intelligent 
theater-goers. Its most dangerous disadvantage is that 
actors will develop under it an artificial pose, for with 



LIGHTING 157 

light coming from above an actor is aware that his nose 
and lips throw triangular shadows upon his face as they 
never do in natural lighting outdoors or in a room. To 
counteract this, members of companies playing in several 
theaters in New York have fallen into the trick of tilting 
their heads back to catch better lighting. 

In October, 1920, a critic in a New York periodical wrote 
these pertinent sentences: — "It is in order, though, to ask 
where Mr. Belasco, usually so correct in matters of light- 
ing detail, ever saw moonlight so vivid that it outshone the 
strong illumination of a brilliantly lighted drawing-room. 
It's all right for Mr. Arthur Hopkins to over-rule natural 
laws in lighting effects but we don't often see Mr. Belasco 
working miracles of that sort. The latter usually has some 
logical reason or excuse for his stage surprises in lighting." 
— Mr. Metcalf in Judge. 

An amateur producer will always try to correct the in- 
sistencies of the faddist by the cold test of actuality. The 
author of an excellent book on play production admitted 
to me that a certain lighting effect which he praised en- 
thusiastically he had never seen on the stage; he had based 
his opinions upon a black and white sketch made by the 
artists. This is no proof that the acted detail was at all 
like the artists' preliminary conception. Very likely when 
this was tried in actual performance — if it ever was — 
changes of all kinds were made before the effect was satis- 
factory. If you have participated in many dress rehearsals 
— in most cases the only ones in which amateurs use the 
stage where their performance is to be given — you are aware 



158 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

of how much is still to be arranged before the opening 
night. Frequently the entire lighting scheme is revised 
between the two dates. 

For a long time Mr. Bassett Jones, a well-known au- 
thority on all kinds of lighting, was quoted as the final force 
in the banishment of footlights, but he has declared that 
they are useful, often necessary, so all who followed his 
lead, will now have to admit their value. 

For certain plays, then, footlights are necessary. With 
them there must be side lights or strip lights, and border 
lights above. Two or three sets of border lights may be 
necessary to cover the stage depth. This scheme does not 
mean that the entire stage will be lighted equally from all 
points, for by varying the intensity, effects of naturalness 
may be reproduced. One lighting expert has made the keen 
suggestion that this same natural appearance of the persons 
on the stage may be heightened by placing at one side an 
amber light and at the other a blue one. This arrange- 
ment will cast slight shadows upon one side of the face 
exactly as we see in actual life. In a room light strikes 
the face from definite sources. Outdoors all lighting comes 
from level sun rays. If on the stage the shadows are not 
too pronounced the realistic aspect of the acting will be 
enhanced. 

Strip lights at the sides and the front row of border 
lights are intended to neutralize the shadows cast upward 
by the footlights. In an interior with a ceiling upon it the 
front border light is the only one that can be utilized, so 
it must equal in intensity the footlights. When exterior sets 
are used this light from the front would cast shadows of 



LIGHTING 159 

every profile of foliage, every leg-drop, every tree form. 
The other border lights are then used behind each such sec- 
tion. In the rear the back-drop or cyclorama is lighted 
from above by the last border, or if the row of lights can 
be masked and no character has to pass behind them, by 
strips of lights upon the floor. 

Further intensification of lighting is usual in all theaters. 
The spot or flood thrown from the gallery, is shown at its 
crudest in the vaudeville house. In the gorgeous Chu Chin 
Chow a large battery of lights, operated artistically from 
the front of the balcony, enhanced many of the scenes. The 
Little Theater of New York has dropping sections of the 
ceiling from which rays can be directed upon the stage. 
In order to secure wider diffusion of light to produce a more 
agreeable mellowness some little theaters have wrought-iron 
brackets projecting into the house from each side of the 
stage opening. Upon these are hung lanterns, or globes, or 
some other decorative unit to spread light more widely than 
the front border can. While some directors suggest the 
wider use of the auditorium to supplement stage lighting, 
most directors try to confine lighting to the stage proper, 
for any extended use of the darkened house is nothing but 
a return to the early gallery spot, no matter how much 
modified it may be. 

In modern, realistic plays there are employed all kinds 
of devices to bring out facial expression. Many persons in 
the audience never know of their presence in the scene. 
Two men in The Tabloid, by Arthur Eckersley, had an im- 
portant scene as they stood on opposite sides of a table 
above which hung a dome light. It was discovered that 



i6o PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

while this single lighting unit gave exactly the concentrated 
effect desired in the otherwise dark room, it did not bring 
out for persons sitting in the audience the tense faces of the 
two men. A white globe was concealed in a pasteboard 
box behind a rack of books upon the table to throw a light 
up to the men's faces. A similar device is the placing of 
a light behind the foot of a bed to fall upon the heroine's 
face as she sits up against the pillows. These are simple 
cases, of course, but other tricks are as usual. When young 
Baxter of Seventeen stood before the mirror to note his ap- 
pearance in his father's dress suit, few people realized that 
an extra amount of light from a spotlight concealed among 
the foots was turned upon him. So in many so-called 
realistic productions there are heightening effects. Mrs. 
Fiske may remark that she did not know for a long time 
the meaning of the phrase " A little more of the baby on 
the King," but every other stage performer knows it and 
isn't happy until he gets it, whether it be really a baby- 
spot or a full-sized one. 

As amateurs deal largely with unusual plays, so they have 
more opportunities for unusual lighting effects than profes- 
sionals. All of us have heard of the wonderful effects se- 
cured by simple means. Maurice Brown always declared 
that the lighting system of his Chicago Little Theater was 
extremely simple. Moon rays have been cast across stages 
from a bicycle lantern covered with green tissue paper. 
Improvised dimmers have been already mentioned. 

With the propensity to romantic, costume, fantastic pro- 
ductions has come the most significant opportunity of 
amateur stage decorators. A large number of treatises 



LIGHTING 161 

offer help to the beginning experimenter. If he has the 
equipment, the material, the time, he can work out com- 
binations for himself. 

The supernatural offers him his first chance. In com- 
bination with the real he has merely to resort to the prin- 
ciple of contrast. 

At one time, undoubtedly, a person, if asked to mention 
the color which connoted the other world, would have men- 
tioned red. While this is fairly common in people's minds, 
there is a deeper response to the suggestion of the unreality 
of green. This color has come to be used almost always to 
aid the appearance of the Ghost in Hamlet, so the amateur 
director can take a lesson from this. If he is producing Lord 
Dunsany's A Night at an Inn how shall he evoke the proper 
awesomeness at the entrance of the dread god Klesh? 
First of all, to be most arresting, he should enter at the 
rear. With night outside the Inn it should be easy to have 
the stage rather darkened. To heighten the supernatural 
have the door opened by unseen hands to disclose Klesh 
standing there in a ghastly green light. This can be thrown 
upon him from a baby-spot suspended just above the door- 
way, focussed upon him. As he advances slowly into the 
room, another baby-spot, already hung in the first border 
and carefully tested before the play began, should be turned 
upon the upper part of his body. Any shadow should be 
neutralized. The effect can be further emphasized by the 
use of phosphorescent paint upon parts of the face and cos- 
tume. Another method of securing the same effect would 
be to arrange a headdress projecting somewhat over the 
face. Under this conceal a small green electric light bulb 



1 62 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

connected with a small storage battery concealed in the 
actor's costume. This glow cast downward will give the 
proper ghoulish tint. The spot of light cast upon the floor 
will not be too distracting to the spectators. It may even 
give the impression that the figure moves about in his own 
supernatural glow. 

In a full-length play lighting is likely to be as important 
as properties. In combination with the scenery it is almost 
as significant as the play and the acting. Long before the 
full drama is placed upon the stage for its last rehearsals, 
the director should hand to the lighting manipulators his 
specifications, or he should discuss with them exactly what 
he should like to have. The technicians will then be able 
to inform him whether he may have all he wants exactly 
as he has described it. These technical workers, knowing 
the equipment and its capabilities and flexibility better 
than he does, will probably suggest modifications, substi- 
tutes, and omissions, until a practicable working compro- 
mise is evolved. The craftsman detailed to manipulate the 
lights and all his assistants should know the play from see- 
ing it rehearsed rather than from reading the script. This 
visualization will — if they be artistically interested — give 
them ideas for the best reinforcing effects. Their sugges- 
tions should always be tried unless they are manifestly im- 
possible of realization or inconsistent with the ideas of the 
play already instilled and crystallized. Enthusiasts should 
be curbed until they accept their parts as contributory, not 
leading ones. If an experimenter is allowed to experiment 
too long he will become an improviser and stop the play 
while he ecstatically runs the whole gamut of the lighting 




Photograph by White 




Above : The Aulis Difficulty, by Maurice Baring. Yale 

Dramatic Association. 
Below : The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, by G. Bernard 

Shaw. The Play-House, Lake Forest. 



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LIGHTING 163 

range. Before the dress rehearsal, the lighting should be 
decided upon, the connections should be made, the lights 
placed, the cues memorized, the changes known. Then a 
dress rehearsal should do more to smooth a performance 
than it so frequently does. Most dress rehearsals seem to 
ruffle people. Actors reach home at two in the morning, 
while members of the productions committee stay up all 
night to finish scenery and run wires. This should be cor- 
rected, and directors should insist upon an expedition and 
facilitation of all the mechanical aids to good productions. 
It is a ridiculous waste of time to have the cast dressed 
and made-up to start a dress rehearsal at half past seven, 
and find the electrician of the group just starting to screw 
colored bulbs into the sockets. If everything had been 
placed and connected before dinner, there could be a half- 
hour's experimentation before rehearsal, then no stops need 
be made during the action to repeat lighting changes. Dress 
rehearsals are only too frequently more likely to be scenery 
and lighting rehearsals. 

A worse kind of late preparation occurs when the lighting 
expert and the director change their minds after the dress 
rehearsal. This is fatal when it should be tried with the 
action itself, as there is no chance to work it out except 
in the actual performance. Worse still is the last minute 
change when everything is ready for the performance to 
begin. Once I sat in an audience gathered to see three 
one-act plays. Between the second and third the wait 
stretched to thirty minutes. From behind the curtains 
came muffled sounds of moving objects and persons. Then 
there appeared in the rear of the house the head of the 



1 64 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

productions committee. When spectators asked if the cur- 
tain would open soon they were told no one knew. Author 
and stage manager had decided to change the lighting and 
were frantically moving lights about, trying color mediums, 
rearranging the actors, and in general raising such last- 
minute confusion that others were deserting the stage in dis- 
gust and despair. Neither of the two men seemed to feel 
any responsibility to the waiting, anxious audience, who 
should have keenly resented such theatrical mismanagement 
and discourteous forgetfulness. At times like this — and 
every amateur organization experiences them — there should 
be a beneficent tyrant whose word is law. He should order 
a rapid arrangement, banish the vacillating temperaments 
from the stage, call " places " to the actors, and give the 
signal for the curtain. 

A person who cannot make up his mind in advance should 
never be entrusted with the staging of amateur plays. 

The first time a director studies a play he may make 
indications of the lighting. How to carry these out will be 
settled later in conference with his electrical staff. 

A great favorite with skilled amateurs is The Chinese 
Lantern by Laurence Housman. It gives so much chance 
for beauty of lighting that it is worth studying for that 
alone. The three acts take place in the studio of a Chinese 
artist. This requires an interior with doors, windows, easels, 
stools,, pictures. Only one unusual feature is required by 
the play. This is a large picture showing a garden, and in 
the foreground a hanging lantern, a mandolin, and a jar 
with blossoms. At several points in the play this picture 
glows with unnatural light, and in it appears the old master 



LIGHTING 165 

who painted it, to utter warning and advice to two of the 
characters. So far all this is quite easy to construct. But 
— and this demands ingenuity for its successful accomplish- 
ment — into that picture in Act II walks and disappears a 
young artist, and from it in Act III he returns to claim his 
sweetheart just before she is married to the fat clown whose 
soul is set on being a grocer. 



Black Velvet Curtain 



Light* 




Footlights and Border Lights 

Lighting arrangement for The Chinese Lantern. See 
illustration for the stage setting. 

Placed about the stage and hanging from the ceilings 
might be beautiful Chinese lanterns, except that they will 
not serve for the brightness of full day in which the play 
opens and ends. Footlights and borders of amber should 
bathe the colorful stage. Act II opens after sunset. 
Through the translucent paper covering of the windows a 
red glow could be thrown from a flood, or a bunch of bulbs. 
This would have to be reinforced by strong red from foot- 
lights and borders. As the slave girl goes about stage light- 
ing the lanterns (by turning the buttons of the electric 



1 66 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

lights in them) the red must be dimmed. Gradually the 
amber in footlights and borders would replace the red, al- 
though a faint tint might be allowed to play upon the 
window. A little later the drudge is ordered to put out all 
the lights. If he turns out a few in the lanterns the audi- 
ence will be prepared for a gradual darkening which is 
needed for the supernatural effect to be operated with the 
painting a few minutes later. When the boy who yearns 
to be an artist is discovered copying the old masterpiece 
his sketch is torn to fragments. As he lies sobbing on the 
floor, the lantern in the picture begins to glow, disclosing 
the great old painter who stretches out his hand and draws 
the youth into the painting, where both figures disappear. 
When all the characters rush in and find him vanished they 
of course light the lanterns, so there is a brilliant stage 
again. 

Act III discloses the studio before dawn. Just the 
merest dim light from a single bulb in the border would 
be enough to show the slave-girl asleep on the floor. The 
first person who enters carries a lantern. It should throw 
enough light to cover this first part. A later character 
orders the door opened. Through it should streak the pale 
light of dawn, reinforced slightly from the front and above. 
It is again in this dim light that the picture begins to glow 
and from it steps the former drudge, now resplendent in 
festal robes. As he and the little slave-girl — really the 
bearer of a charm to make her husband a great artist — 
declare their love, the red glow of morning bathes the win- 
dows and pours through the door. Again this should be 
reinforced by the other lights, but not too strongly. Then 



LIGHTING 167 

as the action progresses this red glow is replaced by the 
amber of bright daylight — but not too quickly — and so the 
play ends in the brightness with which it began. 

The manipulation of the picture would be extremely easy 
were it not for the requirement of having a character 
actually step into it and step from it later. If its only 
mystery were the appearance of its painter in its depths 
that would be easy. A picture built up of its details and 
covered with gauze would serve that illusion nicely. The 
actor, as the old artist, could step from behind some cover- 
ing foliage. Or if the picture were painted on the gauze, 
then reproduced on the background, a few lights turned on 
behind the gauze would bring the standing figure into view. 
But entrances and exits preclude any gauze covering. 

In one amateur production this was quite simply ar- 
ranged, yet it drew spontaneous applause from audiences 
of thousands every time it was repeated. 

The tone of the studio walls was tan in panels framed 
in black. In the center of the rear wall was set an open 
arch some six by seven feet. Behind it about three feet 
away were hung black velvet curtains. A platform was 
covered with a dark red rug. Upon this were placed a 
couple of stools, a tall brilliantly colored jar containing sev- 
eral sprays of pink blossoms, and a mandolin. A lattice 
work railing painted white set up at the rear of the plat- 
form threw all these details into high relief in the fore- 
ground of the supposed painting. Across the velvet curtain 
was pinned a cut-out paper tree branch painted in rather 
flat tones. Its foliage dropped and mounted about the black 
background, which appeared yards away. The lantern 



1 68 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

which hung at the top of the painting was only half a 
lantern masking an electric bulb which illuminated the 
entire upper center of the painting at the proper time. On 
each side of this built-up painting was a strip of six incan- 
descent lights, the lower two red, the upper four white. 
These also were turned on only at the proper time. Placed 
as it was, the furthest thing on the stage from the footlights, 
continually detracted from by the lines, brilliant costumes, 
and movements of the actors, this " painting " actually 
appeared to be one. Just before the old master's appear- 
ance, without the audience's being clearly aware of it, the 
regular stage was darkened as much as possible. At its 
darkest the old artist slipped sideways into his position. 
Theri; as there were no dimmers on the side strips, two 
boys, carefully alternating, screwed in the lowest red 
globes, then those above them, until finally the bulb in the 
lantern above the opening was turned on, and the artist 
stood in brilliant view. The entire picture glowed, of 
course, by contrast with its previous lighting. For the dis- 
appearance of the character the process was reversed. 
There was no hurry about it, and the audience was not 
startled. The change took place before their very eyes, 
only they could not see, nor could they puzzle out exactly, 
how it was done. 

If you keep your eyes open for such details even when 
you are most interested in the story of a drama, you will 
notice a great deal of good lighting, and some astoundingly 
bad lighting. The most laughable is the way the footlights 
jump up after the butler has turned the light switch in the 
wall, and has taken his hand away. This can be so simply 



LIGHTING 169 

remedied that it is a silly error. He should hold his hand 
on the button until the lights have been turned up at the 
switch-board. The same rule applies to all kinds of changed 
lighting caused by the characters in the scene. 

Of course, opera has always had its ridiculous practices, 
and always will have, I suppose, yet it was somewhat of a 
shock to see in the otherwise excellently managed produc- 
tion of L'Oracolo a glaring fault of lighting. The scene is 
laid in Hatchet Alley of the San Francisco Chinese quarter. 
Borders to mask the space above were cleverly devised to 
represent lines of clothes on ropes. At one side of the stage 
were a couple of stores, while the other was taken up by 
the opium den of the villain. Across the stage rear was 
erected a long piece of scenery representing several tumble . 
down two-storied houses. The lighting was entirely satis- 
factory and realistic through the early part of the action — 
so satisfactory and agreeable that a spectator was not even 
conscious of it. Just before the heroine made her first ap- 
pearance, an Italian lamp-lighter crossed the stage and with 
his long stick turned out the street lamp. Quite appropri- 
ately the entire stage was darkened at once, and a cor- 
responding hush fell over the audience. The shutters at 
one of the second story windows were slowly opened and 
the prima donna appeared. Then came the incongruous 
lighting. Full upon her was thrown a brilliant small amber 
light. There was no place on the stage from which such 
a strange sudden light could originate. As a matter of 
fact -it was thrown from behind one of the house wings. 
Who ever saw a levelly directed yellow light in a dark 
night? The incongruity — designed, no doubt, to throw her 



170 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

into high relief — threw her entirely out of the picture, and 
as she sang with the conventional gestures of all grand 
opera, her hands and arms cast grotesque shadows upon her 
face. When her aria was finished and she was about to 
close the shutters, the yellow light vanished as if by magic. 
The whole proceeding was so prominent in a modern exhibi- 
tion of stagecraft as to call for more than passing comment. 
If the prima donna's contract stipulates that she must 
be favored by a spot at her first appearance ingenuity should 
at least invent something more plausible and acceptable 
than a bald disregard of all common sense. It would be 
easy to bring in that patch of light, but naturally and 
artistically. For instance, just before the street lamp is 
turned out the stage could be bathed in light blue sug- 
gesting moonlight. A slight intensification of this would 
give a reasonable excuse for letting a slightly brighter ray 
strike upon those shutters before they are opened. Let 
the character move into the light; never make nature fol- 
low her around to " spot " her for a solo just at the proper 
moment. Another scheme, not quite so romantic in the 
circumstances, would be to have the room in which the 
heroine is, bathed in light. If the beams were thrown 
equally from above and from both sides and from points 
slightly in front of her, they would have lighted her face 
well enough to let her singing be heard. As she was sing- 
ing in Italian, only the melody and quality mattered to the 
audience. She was not acting in any tense situation, so 
there was no need to emphasize her facial expression. In 
sum, there was no reason for this incongruous detail of 
lighting. If the explanation be given that dawn was com- 



LIGHTING 171 

ing, that can be answered by saying that dawn does not 
come in single rays but in a broadly diffused glow. Nor 
does it disappear after a five minute seance at an opened 
window. 

One of the greatest helps to the director is the scheme 
of painting with color. In this he actually tints uncol- 
ored or neutrally colored scenery and hangings with col- 
ored light. Such a scheme cannot be utilized for all kinds 
of plays, but skilfully employed it produces elements of 
beauty, which are artistic delights. The method requires 
delicacy of treatment, for it must be suggestive rather 
than garish. It also must not interfere with the proper 
lighting of the characters, nor must it be neutralized by 
this. Somewhat related to this is a scheme of planes of 
lights. 

To produce such planes more than the usual borders 
of lights will be needed. Each should project its rays 
almost vertically downward. Shadows should be neutral- 
ized by strong rays from both right and left. I have seen 
some models — but never stages themselves — ingeniously 
devised with lights sunk in troughs, or concealed behind 
low platforms, or profiles, to produce similar planes of 
lights. These planes extending across stage parallel to 
the footlights may merely be planes of different intensities, 
or they may be planes of different colors. If the first — 
different intensities — they may be used in relation to the 
emotional phases of the action to emphasize it. If so used, 
many rehearsals will have to be conducted in this lighting, 
for characters will have to learn exactly where to stand. If 
different colors form the planes, the lighting will add to 



172 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the pictorial effect. Such a scheme — to give only one in- 
stance — might be followed for the first scene of The Harle- 
quinade by Dion Calthrop and Granville Barker, repre- 
senting the banks of the Styx. The back drop or cyclo- 
rama could be bathed in the coldest, most mysterious blue, 
with suggestions of vertical shafts of other colored lights, 
to indicate vast depths below. The rugged rock profiles 
and the bare trees might be colored brown and dead gray. 
Just in front of this there might be a pink section. Then 
as characters advanced through this the audience would 
get just a hint of that ruddiness which we all associate 
with the underworld. Near the front an amber zone would 
give the air of reality in which the philosopher, newly ar- 
rived from earth, might stand, and into which the deities 
might pass as they decide to leave the dwellings of the 
dead to come to this world. When Mercury appears bril- 
liant rays from a baby spot-light should be thrown full 
upon him to emphasize this brilliance. 

Amateurs have only begun to sound the possibilities of 
lighting. They are usually handicapped by lack of space, 
equipment, means. But they are making progress in spite 
of many drawbacks and mistakes. 

A recently exploited field is the emphasis of dramatic 
action and emotional stress by a play of lights. Some- 
what this same attempt has been made in connection with 
music, and one color symphony has been given in New 
York. It has not been so successful in musical combina- 
tions, perhaps because the sense of sight has never been 
associated with appreciative listening to music, and also 
because people are not agreed upon the correspondence of 



LIGHTING 173 

certain tints to definite notes. In drama there has always 
been the association of ear and eye, so the artistic color 
manipulator does not have to weld together the two senses. 
Generations of attendance at performances have already 
done that for him. We laugh at the crude attempts to re- 
inforce dramatic feeling by incidental music in anything 
except the most fantastic drama. We shout with derisive 
glee at " Eliza — crossing-the-ice " music, but we have not 
fused into drama all the assistance afforded by emotion- 
alized lighting. Some producers have made attempts; some 
have achieved successes, others have perpetrated disheart- 
ening mistakes. 

In a Greek tragedy suddenly to shift the color upon the 
stage from amber to red because the characters begin to 
discuss war is to jolt the sensibilities, rather than to re- 
inforce them. It would be just as consistent to tinge every 
sentimental passage with violet or pink tints. Then, to 
heighten effects there must be an observance of that other 
essential principle — contrast. An art-director will do well 
to pause long enough to consider all possibilities before 
choosing one. Will the darkening effect of red be the best 
medium to accompany the effects of battle, murder, and 
sudden death? Might not the revealing coldness of full 
white sunlight do it better? Did Charles Rann Kennedy 
succeed with this intention at the conclusion of The Terrible 
Meek? Evidently, there must always be the appropriate 
adjustment of means to ends. While color is one of the 
most fascinating elements of a theatrical production to 
experiment with, it should be understood that its use must 
depend upon long and careful and appreciative experi- 



174 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

mentation. Distance, shadows, basic color of scenery, cos- 
tumes, movements of performers, feeling, situation, make- 
up; any single one of these may spoil the result of long 
calculated combinations. The general use of amber on 
the stage has changed making-up to look natural under 
the newer medium. 

Even professional producers sometimes make glaring 
blunders in dealing with lighting matters affecting their per- 
formers. Upon a stage containing a large number of 
women one director threw a peculiar green light, turning 
his attractive looking company into a sickly, jaundiced 
hospital ward. A long list of such errors can be made by 
any observant playgoer. There are the countless scenes 
in which sunlight pours in at rear windows, yet all the 
shadows of persons are cast back into the teeth of the 
brilliant sunlight by the more brilliant footlights. There 
are the glowing fireplaces before which sentimental scenes 
are played, yet which never by any chance cast a shadow 
out into the room. There are the stormy pitch black 
nights which magically clear into the glorious light of 
day before you can say " Jack Robinson," as in the last 
act of Miss Nelly of N'Orleans. There are the elaborate 
center clusters in drawing rooms which never throw a 
shadow upon the floor, although nowhere on the stage is 
there the slightest indication of any other lights to neutral- 
ize them. Because of this, many designers of interiors use 
wall brackets placed so that they naturally destroy 
shadows. In fact, in most professional productions, all 
shadows are avoided as taints. One was used to good 
effect in the cell in Justice by Galsworthy, but this was on 



LIGHTING 175 

a very small stage. There is a good reason behind this 
professional fear of them. Distances on the regular stage 
are so great that any shadow of a person swells to enor- 
mous size before it is cast upon a surface. The very at- 
tempt to secure a natural shadow would inject a gigantic 
spot detracting from the character itself. Lady Gregory 
in a letter to W. B. Yeats commented on exactly such a 
circumstance. Of a production of his play The Shadowy 
Waters she wrote that the only vexing part was a war- 
rior's helmet, which bore immense horns. The black 
shadow thrown down from these, every time he moved, 
produced the impression that a black goat was going to 
lunge at him from the side of the ship. Only within re- 
stricted limits can visible shadows be allowed. The small 
stage of amateurs need not observe this rule as strictly. 
With its restricted size shadows bear more nearly the same 
relation to objects that they do in actualness. This gives 
to the little theater a chance for effects almost impossible 
upon larger scenes. 

The risks attendant upon manipulation of lighting are 
omnipresent, but the exultation resulting from a telling 
stroke o'erweighs all the disappointments. 



CHAPTER X 
EXPERIMENTING 

The word " experimental " has come to be associated 
closely with all amateur acting organizations, but the term 
is quite as fittingly applied to most commercial producers. 
The fundamental principle of all dramatic production is 
experimentation. Every new play is an experiment. Natu- 
rally, as business managers are in theatrical enterprises 
for something different from pleasure and health, they 
try to reduce to its lowest degree the risk attendant upon 
such experimentation, and to increase the certainty of finan- 
cial return by depending upon all that can be made stable 
in the theater. Every play is bound to be an experiment, 
a risk; therefore, concludes the regular metropolitan owner, 
let us get into its production many elements which are 
not experimental or risky. Let us use tried and sure per- 
formers who have proven that they can hold and interest 
large audiences; let us use in stage design, color, manage- 
ment, those methods which have always " worked " be- 
fore; let us follow the line of least resistance in costumes 
and lighting; let us never startle the passive receptivity 
of patrons who come to theaters for the same kind of 
thing year after year, and who will be actively resentful 
if they do not find what they want. 

Yet novelty will attract as well as monotony, and to 
its credit the regular theatrical world presents many signal 

176 



EXPERIMENTING 177 

instances of daring and popular innovations. Arthur Hop- 
kins was experimenting when he offered Gorky's A Night's 
Lodging and Benelli's The Jest; so was Granville Barker 
when he produced Shaw's Androcles and the Lion, so was 
Mr. Faversham when he arranged an all-star cast for Get- 
ting Married, so was Oscar Asche when he started Chu Chin 
Chow; so was Max Reinhardt when he conceived Sumurum; 
so was Walter Hampden when he began a series of extra 
matinees of Hamlet in an entirely new kind of adaptable 
scenery; so was John Drinkwater when he challenged the 
supposed general public indifference to history and offered 
in England a chronicle play dealing with an American 
president. 

Amateurs have the immeasurable superiority because they 
can experiment more frequently, in more different ways 
and with more daring and successful originality. Mak- 
ing, usually, no pretense to competition with professional 
houses, striving not to attract the public but a public, hav- 
ing less money invested, being under no obligations of pay- 
ing large dividends, never concerned with a play or a 
method for a long time; original, daring, spontaneous, and 
enthusiastic, they can make a score of unusual experi- 
ments to every one of the regular stage. When amateurs 
become signally successful with any one element of ex- 
perimentation that detail becomes part of the regular equip- 
ment of the commercial theater. 

Every worker with things theatrical has tucked back 
somewhere in his consciousness a few things he should like 
to do, or see done, a few definite ideas he should like to 
have carried out. And since in amateur groups the organ- 



178 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

ization by committees usually checks or curbs autocratic 
rule and plan, he frequently envies those professional pro- 
ducers whose single autocratic word is law. In the next 
breath, however, he will admit readily enough, that if any 
man dependent upon public support were to carry out his 
own personal plans or ideas, he would land certainly in 
bankruptcy, perhaps also in a sanatorium. Reports do 
filter through at times of seemingly ideal arrangements in 
which the strangest plans are put into operation. If they 
are as far away as Florence or Moscow they have all the 
romantic charm of distance — and immunity from critical 
scrutiny, 

Some desires are not beyond easy fulfilment and gen- 
eral response. I may be quite mistaken in this view, but 
I always conceive the audiences of little theaters as keenly 
interested in the materials and methods of productions as 
well as in the finished plays themselves. As the inevitable 
corollary of that premise I conceive that all little theater 
groups are continually advancing in all the elements of 
theatric art. Certainly with that gradual or accelerated 
change there goes some educating influence, or sharpening 
of critical acumen, a deepening, penetration of insight, 
or a widening sympathy of comprehension. A sensitive 
appreciation of this change in the audience has already 
been listed as one of the most desirable qualities of a di- 
rector. And when some member of long standing laments 
the good old days when " we used to act in Maguire's studio 
before a lot of screens and think we were doing great 
things," one can merely agree with him, for he is right in 
his reminiscence. But if any stage setting now shows an 



EXPERIMENTING 179 

unwieldy bulk of mass, or if the dimmer jumps down too 
jerkily, that same elderly recounter of the good old times 
will be the loudest in demanding what the productions 
committee means by offering stuff which would not be 
tolerated even in the commercial theater. 

The device of grouping a series of one-act plays around 
a single idea is one which should be easiest to realize and 
make acceptable in experiment. Some suggestions of this 
have been given already — the Washington Square Players 
gave a bill of comedies of different nationalities. It would 
be interesting to arrange a " lover " bill. It might be 
opened with The Constant Lover by St. John Hankin in as 
realistic a setting as the artists could devise. I do not be- 
lieve this humorous dialogue gains by being surrounded 
by bizarre forests or Bakst back-drops. Its dainty charm 
is in its contrast between the reality of usual life and the 
outrageous logic of the lover. After this might be pre- 
sented The Magnanimous Lover by St. John Ervine, set 
and acted in as realistic a manner as possible. If possible, 
it should be so acted as to bite deeply into the conscious- 
ness of the auditors as acid bites into an etcher's plate. 
Having twice used realism of setting, the next should fling 
all usual appearances to the winds, for the designer should 
be directed to let his fancy construct whatever it would 
to surround The Honorable Lover by Roberto Bracco. 
Then the performers should be trained to breathless speed 
of action, and heightened exaggeration of type. The more 
bizarre these three elements of the performance could be 
made the better. But — and this is important for the idea 
— the costumes of the performers in this last should be 



i8o PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

kept quite within the range of fashionable probability. 
While both surprise and exaggeration are legitimate means 
of comedy and humor, incongruity is a more potent one. 
Therefore in this play the incongruity would be height- 
ened by keeping one factor constant to ordinary experi- 
ence. I mention this especially here because I heard of 
one production of Food by William C. DeMille in which 
the tired business man whose wife takes from the safe 
their treasures — a cracker and four drops of milk was 
dressed somewhat in the extreme fashion of a futurist. 
He wore tan shoes, white spats, brown, narrow trousers, 
soft pink shirt and collar, light olive-green coat which was 
buttoned with one button at the waist and which was very 
tight in its fit and long and full in the skirt. His tie was 
soft green satin to match the green of his straw hat, while 
the most delicate shade of pink circled the hat. He wore 
his hair well marcelled; and he carried yellow gloves and 
yellow cane. His wife wore a mandarin coat of black taf- 
feta covered with black jet and white glass beads worked 
in the most intricate fashions and patterns. Her trousers 
were of black taffeta with large full puffs and circled with 
bands of brilliants, between the puffs. Dainty black satin 
slippers and hose and a black headdress with much lace 
and many brilliants, completed her attire. 

Such decoration may be picturesque, but I believe it 
does not help at all the idea of the satire. The average 
spectator seeing such fantastic costumes would say to him- 
self, " Well, there's nothing funny about that play. If 
the day ever comes when sensible people dress like that, 
they will deserve to have no food." 





Above : The Locked Chest, by John Masefield. The 
Little Theater, Denver. 



Below : The Bear, by Anton Tchekoff. 
Players, New York. 



Stuyvesant 



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nc 


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Photographs by J. Steinke and W. W. Weber 

Pan in Seven Shadozu Plays, by R. Hoerschelmann. De- 
signed by Minna Horwitz. The Playhouse, Cleveland. 



EXPERIMENTING 181 

One member of a committee suggested that there be 
produced a three-act play which had failed on the pro- 
fessional stage because of its last act, to let the audience 
see and judge just what was wrong with the material. 
This would have been interesting for those persons study- 
ing play construction, but it was felt that to announce for 
performance a play already known as a failure only to 
get a negative response from the last part would be taxing 
the generous natures of the hundreds in the audience to 
the breaking point. Yet some such scheme could easily be 
carried into performance. 

To provide an evening of contrast in stage decoration 
and acting a director might try to do what Evreinov — 
author of The Theater of the Soul — did at his Parody 
Theater in Petrograd. Because this playhouse is a 
" parody " theater and also because he could pierce the 
pretentiousness of so many impracticable reformers of the 
theater, this original author produced the first act of the 
best-known Russian comedy, The Inspector-General by 
Gogol, several times in one evening in the different styles 
of modern stage production. Two of the models he used 
were the Art Theater of Moscow, and the teachings of 
Gordon Craig. I believe it would be possible to hold an 
audience through an evening with a similar bill based on 
some familiar English or American play. Perhaps a scene 
from Shakespeare would do as well as anything else. It 
might be done with historical fidelity as far as that could 
be attained. It could be done after the scrappy barnstorm- 
ing methods of thirty years ago. It might be done stylis- 
tically as were Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's 



1 82 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Dream by Granville Barker, or in a framed setting as were 
Mr. Hampden's Hamlet, Mr. Sothern's Twelfth Night, Mr. 
Barrymore's Richard III. This experiment would be at- 
tractive only, I believe, for extremely unsophisticated au- 
diences or for those highly trained by theater attendance. 

Whenever I hear that a dramatist has changed a play 
fundamentally I wish I could have seen both versions. 
For instance, I should like to have seen Booth Tarking- 
ton's Poldekin when the protagonist died in the last act, 
then again after the author had decided to let Mr. Arliss 
live. I should like to see the happy ending (made for 
Germany) of Ibsen's A Doll's House. In this Nora at the 
last moment is restrained by the thought of her children 
from leaving her home and husband. I should like to see 
Goethe's Stella with its different endings. In every per- 
formance of Hamlet I am never satisfied until I see 
whether the curtain is coming down on the Prince of Den- 
mark dead upon the floor, seated upon the throne, or being 
borne out to the platform by the soldiers of Fortinbras. 
I was extremely interested, although keenly disappointed, 
at Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon on the stage, with 
its omission from Act I of a long conversation between 
son and father, and its peculiar conclusion, so different from 
the published version. 

Only under most unusual conditions could one produce 
a long play and give its two conclusions on the same eve- 
ning. But somewhat the same impression may be made 
by showing the same or similar themes differently treated. 
When I first paged through Polti's thirty-six dramatic 
.situations I wondered whether it would be possible to find 



EXPERIMENTING 183 

a few plays clearly illustrating different handlings of the 
same theme. The complications would be endless because 
seldom does any play, even a short one, deal with un- 
mixed motives. Then I learned of the inclusion in a single 
bill of three plays dealing with the same theme, the thirty- 
second situation, mistaken jealousy. Stated a little more 
comprehensively, the theme is the woman suspected un- 
justly. Julian Thompson has written three one-act plays 
dealing with this situation and the theme growing out of, 
it. The first, How Very Shocking, is comedy; the second, 
Alfeth is tragedy, the third The Warrior's Husband is 
farce. 

If a director felt that his audience had arrived at the 
level where it would be interested in acting above all else 
he might stage the following experiment. After a couple 
of evenings of " talky " modern plays, say by Oscar Wilde 
or G. Bernard Shaw or Galsworthy or Brieux, he could 
prepare for performance just before Christmas time some 
unusual pantomime. The accompanying music should 
prove a novelty, so should the stage sets, for they should 
be made as brilliant and picturesque as possible. The 
first of these, Pierrot's Christmas by Beissier and Monti 
should be offered as close to the holiday date as possible. 
In it all efforts should be concentrated on the homely sen- 
timent of the story, the contrast of irate husband and ten- 
der-hearted wife, the appeal of helpless childhood and the 
melting of the old man's resentment. If the audience could 
stand two pantomimes, after its reception there should be 
announced the second offering, though an effort should 
be made to keep secret the fact that it too is purely panto- 



1 84 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

mime. In some sections of this country, I believe, this 
would be possible, especially if the title last used in New 
York were given instead of the original one. This panto- 
mime would be Pierre the Prodigal, which under its right- 
ful name, L' Enfant Prodigue, enthralled our parents. Quite 
a different sort of pantomime, permitting more original 
treatment than either of the preceding — awakening interest 
because of its music also, is The Box of Toys by De Bussy, 
in three scenes. While the first of these is childlike and 
old-fashioned, the second is smart and risky, the third is 
angular and eccentric. One suits the Christmas spirit, the 
other seems like the proverbial fling with which most per- 
sons like to greet a New Year. Both are appeals to the 
eye and ear, and beautifully acted, as they should and could 
be done, the pair would constitute a welcome experiment 
in the little theater. 

Having introduced long plays let us continue with the 
list of experiments. Every once in a half century some 
rumor starts that The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson is to 
reach the commercial stage. At once spring into life dis- 
cussions as to Elizabethan settings or modern realism. It 
would be interesting to see whether such an old play with a 
reputation for cleverness can justify itself by production 
now. Therefore I should like to see this farce-comedy pre- 
sented with all the care and equipment expended upon a 
contemporaneous play of the same class. The material 
should make its appeal on its intrinsic merit. There should 
be added no antiquarian interest from setting, or from a 
selected audience of college drama students. It should be 
tried before the regular little theater auditors. I believe a 



EXPERIMENTING 185 

careful presentation would be more than slightly interest- 
ing; I believe it would be entertaining, far more genuinely 
entertaining, by the way, than the revival of Gammer Gur- 
ton's Needle. 

There is another division of Ben Jonson's output which 
has always attracted me. Once I fondly believed I was 
going to have my curiosity satisfied and my imagination 
stirred. At one of the incongruous programs devised in 
19 1 6 to celebrate the fame of Shakespeare, upon which as 
usual appeared nothing which the great dramatist wrote, 
was included one of Jonson's masques. I anticipated a de- 
light for my ear and my eye as indicated by Jonson's own 
descriptions of his stage settings and changes. 

The scene to this Masque was a high, steep, red 
cliff, advancing itself into the clouds. . . . Before 
which on the two sides were two pilasters, charged 
with spoils and trophies of Love and his Mother. . . . 
All which with the pillars, seemed to be of burnished 
gold, and embossed out of the metal. ... At which 
with a loud and full music, the cliff parted in the midst, 
and discovered an illustrious concave, filled with an 
ample and glistering light, in which an artificial sphere 
was made of silver, eighteen feet in diameter, that 
turned perpetually. . . . Only the zodiac was of pure 
gold, in which the masquers, under the characters of 
the twelve signs, were placed. 

What was offered was the delivery of the lines and some 
dances upon a flat greensward with never a sign of scen- 
ery. In fact, there was no masque attempted. 

It might not be wise to choose this same masque, but 



186 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

there are more than one to serve the end. Upon it there 
should be lavished every resource of modern knowledge to 
clothe the lines and situations appropriately, which in a 
masque, means elaborately. Just picture in your mind's eye 
the gorgeous stage changes allowable in such mythological 
material as Jonson worked in. If it were possible to have 
for this performance only a small audience, and the floor 
could be cleared for the final general dancing, the attempt 
might be made to induce every spectator to come dressed 
in a Jacobean court costume so that historical accuracy 
might be reproduced up to the last minute. Lacking that, 
several court gentlemen and ladies should be introduced 
upon the stage from the audience to complete the masque 
idea of a general dance. 

Before leaving the Elizabethan period I should like to 
suggest Marlowe's Doctor Faustus for experiment. I do 
not believe there would be much value in a production in 
the so-called (but not correctly called) Elizabethan man- 
ner. To a great extent this experimental production should 
depend for effect on lighting and scenery. The archaic 
should be minimized. The supernatural should be inter- 
preted as closely as possible according to modern precon- 
ceptions likely shared by members of the audience. The 
drama should be emphasized, for I believe that behind the 
boldness of Marlowe's spiritual conceptions, the crudity of 
some of his theatric devices, and the beauty of his verse, 
there is effective drama which would come through. 

When one speaks of poetic drama we naturally think of 
the Elizabethan period only. It is a fact that a few other 
ages produced worthy drama in great poetry, though few 



EXPERIMENTING 187 

of the plays ever reached the stage. Recently an exhibi- 
tion of stage models included one designed for The Cenci 
by Shelley. My idea would not be to produce this play as 
this designer intends it — from a small raised platform with 
the audience all around it. There should be used the regu- 
lar stage for which Shelley wrote the play. It could be 
excellently done. A great deal of the revolting horror of 
the story would be toned down by the romantic attractive- 
ness of Beatrice, the patent villainy of her father, and the 
remoteness in time and place of the incidents. To insure 
its being received with sympathetic appreciation there 
should be a cultured and sophisticated audience. 

Another tense play which should prove as interesting 
an experiment for other little theaters as it was for the 47 
Workshop at Harvard is Eyvind of the Hills by Sigur- 
jonsson. This unusual tragedy of so distant a land as Ice- 
land begins in joy and animation, in merrymaking and 
crowds, and narrows as it increases in intensity and deep- 
ens in force until only two characters are left to face a 
slow, horrible death by freezing or starvation in a mountain 
blizzard. To the art director there would be the problem 
of devising novel stage pictures and convincing mechanical 
effects. To strike the correct note of unusualness in the 
buildings, for instance, without so overstressing it that at- 
tention would be diverted from the human crisis, would 
require a delicate solution of contending claims and lures. 
There is no need to emphasize the difficulty of the acting 
in such a play. Is there not the- same difficulty in ade- 
quately acting an Ibsen tragedy? While every Ibsen story 
makes its primary appeal because of its universal elements, 



1 88 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

do we not expect, almost demand, of the interpreters, some 
unusualness, some slight traces of a realistic reproduction 
of Scandinavian environment which shall continually build 
a frame, as it might be termed, around the picture? Would 
the more somber of the Ibsen series be quite as effective if 
the names of the persons were changed to ordinary Amer- 
ican ones, if the furniture eschewed all the northern touches, 
and if the locale was naturalized? Some connotative 
flavor — too evanescent to grasp at all times, yet sensible as 
a contributing detail of value — would vanish from the 
drama. Because of the delicate adjustment of familiar and 
unfamiliar required to lull active resentment yet to arouse 
responsive curiosity, such a tragedy as this calls for intelli- 
gent experimentation. So likewise, though not to any- 
thing like the same degree, is there the experimental ap- 
peal in Hadda Padda by Kamban. This presents just these 
same elements as Eyvind of the Hills, only here the stage 
requirements are not for such incidental reinforcements 
to the acting as a mountain snow storm, but a seemingly 
impossible setting for the last act of mountain ledges over- 
looking a deep gully in the unseen depths of which the 
moving conclusion takes place. In both these the experi- 
mental lure is provided by the intriguing combination of 
realism — and for us in this country — romance. 

The realistic phase of these two dramas links them with 
another play which has never been given quite enough 
chance by the professional theater. Its author, B. Mac- 
donald Hastings, has written a few distinctive dramas. 
Contrary to the axiom of the commercial stage, that a 
play must have a feminine appeal, there are strong themes 



EXPERIMENTING 189 

1 

based on the reactions of men. When The New Sin was 
tried first in America, the dictum was pronounced that a 
woman must be worked into the cast by some means. So 
the cast was changed and a woman's role was written in. 
An intelligent experimenting director might take that drama 
in its original all-men form, and by sincere, modern meth- 
ods of acting and producing, develop it into a poignant 
illustration of the modern thesis play with a flash-back at 
sociological analysis. It is one of the best examples of the 
indeterminate ending ever penned. It is one of the most 
vivid expositions of the nut-cracker metaphor of Fate. It 
will repay from the production viewpoint any energy ex- 
pended upon it; I believe, also that it will repay the au- 
dience in stimulating emotional as well as celebral reac- 
tion. 

Carrying the possibility of social or moral analysis fur- 
ther, seeking for ever a stronger thrill of the indignant re- 
volt, a director might — he would be a hardy one — offer one 
production of War by Artzibascheff. Such an experiment 
would of necessity have to be linked with definite anti- 
militaristic propaganda. No acting organization merely 
providing dramatic material for its special audience could 
expect to weather such a terror without disaster. But what 
a success could be made of a public view to such a preach- 
ment just at a time, perhaps, when jingo spirit was begin- 
ning to rise. It would have to be at the very beginning, 
for delayed just a little too long it would either be as in- 
effective as was Mr. Galsworthy's The Mob, or like the hero 
of that anti-Boer-War document, it would only serve to 
madden the blood of the hysterical warriors. 



i 9 o PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

The charge has often been made that exponents of the 
little theater idea have tended to become too serious. Many 
a well-intentioned plan has disintegrated because of a con- 
founding of excellence with tragedy, a mistaken linking of 
impressiveness with gloom. Intellectual superiority is not 
always synonymous with Russian or Scandinavian or Greek 
tragedy. Comedy does not inevitably connote common- 
ness. Read George Meredith's Essay on Comedy and The 
Uses of the Comic Spirit for the standard of civilization by 
means of its comic muse. There are two quite apparent 
reasons for the preponderance of lugubriousness over laugh- 
ter in little playhouses. Good comedy is difficult to find, 
and once discovered, it is most difficult to act. After all, 
civilization is sophistication, and sophistication is suspi- 
cious. 

For the sake of variety, if for no other reason, there 
must be light-heartedness in a season of drama. What are 
some of the things with which to experiment? 

There is no inevitable congruous order of succession for 
a list of this kind, so I shall set them down in the degree 
of their uproarious extravagance. Assuming still that the 
little theater audience is rather more than less sophisticated 
I believe a good experimental novelty would be Black-Eyed 
Susan by Douglas Jerrold. It should be produced with 
absolute seriousness and innocence by the cast, and while 
the audience would rock and weep tears of delight at the 
old-fashioned " drammer," the actors should never once de- 
scend from their pedestals of ingenuous purity, nor should 
they fail to make the borders ring with their reverberate 
heroics. A few years ago I saw The Still Alarm acted by 



EXPERIMENTING 191 

firemen for a pension fund, but with its audience there 
were detractions from the fullest immersions of unre- 
strained delight. Rich, rare, and racy as that production 
was, I believe Black-Eyed Susan would be almost Aris- 
tophanic. 

To appreciate the delicious logic of a reductio ad ab- 
surdum propaganda drama I do not believe that a high de- 
gree of cultural veneer is necessary. Therefore, all dramas 
of social analysis should not be reserved for selected au- 
diences only. If the plot be quite clear in the laying down 
of its antecedent premises and flawless in the deductions 
made from them the most ordinary mind cannot escape 
the impression of their inevitable conclusion. Therefore, 
a director could count upon a hearty response if he offered 
The Fountain by George Calderon. 

This excellent comedy with a purpose is as good drama 
as many of G. Bernard Shaw's plays. Among the qualities 
which make it suitable for little theaters are the single set, 
the small nucleus of a cast around which several extras may 
be grouped, the marked differentiation of characters, and 
the situations which almost carry themselves. Best of all 
is the underlying thought-provoking idea of the comedy. 
Intelligent laughter (see George Meredith again) should 
result in cogitation. The smiles and chuckles aroused by 
The Fountain will produce this result. In essence the 
plot is a mathematical demonstration of the silliness of a 
great deal of modern organized charity and uplift activity 
indulged in by enthusiastic sentimentalists egged on by 
well-meaning but shallow agitators. In hundreds of in- 
stances the sums spent by the organizers are assessed upon 



1 92 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

the poor who in the swing of the circle are supposed to 
benefit from the manipulation of their own money by some 
one else. Being an effective dramatist Mr. Calderon does 
not pretend to remedy the practice. He holds his mirror 
up to nature, and grimly says, " This is what you are. 
Now, what are you going to do about it? " 

Allen Upward, several years ago, issued in book 
form, a play called Paradise Found, in which, also with 
logical precision, is shown exactly what kind of world we 
should be living in if for a generation or so all the reforming 
and standardizing improvements of Mr. Shaw should be 
consistently carried into practice. For the best reception 
of this parody the audience should be steeped in as much 
of the Shavian philosophy as possible. They should have 
seen as many of the plays as could have been presented 
during several seasons, and they should be familiar with 
all the dramatic prefaces, so-called novels, articles, and in- 
terviews issued by the satirist of our age. Such prepara- 
tion would put the listener on the alert for every reference 
and allusion to the laws advocated by the present-day 
critic. It would render more delicious every hit registered 
by every detail of Mr. Upward's tribute. Yet such com- 
plete familiarity would not be absolutely necessary. Any 
intelligent person would catch the buffoonery of a society 
in which, as the state has assumed all control over chil- 
dren, no one any longer has a name, but is known by a 
catalogued number only. Marriages are controlled by a 
department of the state. And political meetings are plainly 
— as today actually, though not admittedly — presided over 
by mechanical automata. Some directors may feel that the 



EXPERIMENTING 193 

scenic investiture and technical appliances required by this 
play render it unsuited to experiment; other directors will 
see in those very elements its chief fitness as experimental 
material. 

With all the romanticism, picturesqueness, and novelty 
which may be added to the foregoing, they are all still 
within the realm of actuality and are strictly in the regular 
dramatic form. Let us see if our search for experimental 
material cannot be extended to include more strange as- 
pects, more irregular forms. A good transition is afforded 
by some of the shorter plays of M. Maeterlinck, in which 
though the conversation and action appear to stand still, 
the thought itself advances to climaxes as moving as any 
physical demonstrations can ever be. So, too, some of the 
poetic dramas of W. B. Yeats provide the same kind of 
bridge from the evidently actual to the invisibly potent. 
Yet unsubstantial as are the soul planes of those strange 
plays, the characters do speak their own thoughts, do give 
expression to their fluctuating emotions. Does there exist 
a group of dramas in which, not only is the progress of 
thought the essence of the action, but the lines themselves 
cease to be the spoken deliveries of the persons? 

The best approach to this small group of interesting 
experiments is through Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg. 
In this famous play are shown what all social beings really 
are, the overtones of their true selves. Only here, in com- 
pany with the overtones, who express themselves in all 
ordinary social meetings, are shown the real natures of 
the two women, and under the social insincerities and vapid 
compliments of the overtones are spoken the bitter and 



194 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

true sentiments of the essential persons. So many groups 
have already experimented interestedly and successfully 
with this that they should be able to pass on to other 
specimens. There are some dozen or so plays in which the 
delivered lines are not the speeches of the characters, but 
are merely their thoughts or opinions, delivered, not as 
spoken, but as caught fleeting through their consciousness, 
and as overheard by the omniscient audience. Unfortu- 
nately most of the dramas in this form are serious, so that 
it might be difficult to secure enough variety if many were 
included upon one bill. While the arrangement of an en- 
tire evening's offering would be the best kind of experi- 
ment with this class, some repaying results could be se- 
cured from occasional inclusion. 

One of the most novel is Grotesques by Cloyd Head. Its 
drawback is that its idea is not clearly delineated, its lines 
do not crystallize what should be made clearest, so that 
attention must be centered upon the method of production. 
Originally it was conceived as a moving silhouetted design 
of white figures and costumes against a black background, 
marked by a definite restricting frame. Experimental pro- 
duction and design carried it beyond any point its lines 
and theme would have reached. Some of the Vistas by 
William Sharp might be considered capable of similar treat- 
ment. The only comic or satiric material of this form 
which I know is The Artist by H. L. Mencken. As origi- 
nally published this consisted of the thoughts and half- 
conscious emotions of the janitor, the pianist, and the 
members of the audience — including the music, though not 
musical critics, during an afternoon concert. With lights 



EXPERIMENTING 195 

in the hall turned up, and only the janitor and soloist ap- 
pearing on the stage, while all the other characters speak 
from their places in the audience, the effect is one of un- 
canny reality of meditations suddenly becoming audible. 
Another original theme treated in exactly the same method 
is Orthodoxy by Nina W. Putnam. For this I am afraid 
no satisfactory conditions could be secured for even re- 
hearsal, but it is peculiar even if not practical for experi- 
mentation. By far the most pretentious and successful of 
attempts at unusual cast and locale is The Theater of the 
Soul by N. Evreinov, described by its author as a mono- 
drama. Before the lowered curtain appears first The 
Professor. Upon a blackboard this prologue explains by 
means of algebraic formulas that any one person is really 
represented by the expression: — 

M 1 + M 2 + M 3 = M, the entire personality. 

Having asserted that the seat of the soul of this person- 
ality is the human breast, he retires, and the drawn curtain 
shows the interior of the human soul. Against this back- 
ground, in planes of varied lights are enacted the fleet- 
ing impressions, thoughts, reminiscences of a man in the 
few minutes before he commits suicide by shooting. 

Beyond the limits suggested by the considerations in- 
cluded in this chapter I believe few authors have ven- 
tured. Yet even these limits, I venture to say, will soon 
seem restricted by the seekers after novelty of material 
and those facile innovators of bizarre methods in theater 
craft. Yet the physical structure of playhouses will pre- 
scribe some bounds. So, too, will the receptivity of audi- 
ences. Already there have been as many suggestions of 



i 9 6 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

change in theater arts as there have been proposed amend- 
ments to the Constitution of the United States, but prac- 
ticableness has squelched many. The Ubermarrionet de- 
manded by one enthusiast as the only means of reforming 
all the evil of the contemporary theater has never material- 
ized. The wailing lament of one designer that it was a 
pity the seats could not be taken out so that the spectators 
might walk about to see from all angles the shadows thrown 
upon his stage setting was allowing his overwrought pic- 
torial sense to overwhelm his knowledge of what a theater 
really is. 

Yet while we may smile at the ingenuousness of some 
of the extravagant theorizers we must accord due credit 
to the ingeniousness of the advancing practical experi- 
mentalists. 





^BF»B? > sHHI 


E5M 


■:■■ 




I 




■'■■■. ' f [ffiH& 






The Players, Ypsilanti 



Above : The Clod, by Lewis Beach. 

Below : Love in a Kitchen, an old French farce. 
Notice the same scenery in both plays. 



CHAPTER XI 
EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 

The statement made in the first chapter of this book 
concerning the increased and always increasing interest in 
affairs dramatic needs no further exemplification than the 
rapid development of attention to all theatric arts in school 
and colleges. Nearly every high school does more than 
merely read and discuss classic masterpieces, scores of small 
colleges offer courses leading to fuller understanding of 
play production or active participation in it. A few univer- 
sities have become renowned for the successful results se- 
cured in some special phase of study or creation. A few 
specialized schools of dramatic art have advanced to the 
front rank as producers of good drama in worthy man- 
ner. The term educational dramatics is so wide that it 
may serve to cover any interest even remotely associated 
with the actual house of dramatic energy — the theater. In 
some institutions it denotes merely an adaptation of the 
old-fashioned course in elocution. It may list a historical 
survey of the literary drama. It may advance to a dis- 
cussion of acted literary drama, endeavoring, instead of 
cramming students' minds with the textual difficulties of 
the first two quartos of Hamlet, to show them exactly how 
the foils are exchanged in the fencing bout; or instead of 
discussing whether Portia's legal decision would hold in a 
court today, to indicate how the actress can deliver " The 

197 



1 98 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

quality of mercy " so that it will not sound like a school 
exercise. In some institutions the plastic, design, scenery, 
costume, aspects of drama are emphasized, with attendant 
success in productions of a restricted class of plays. Others, 
leaving aside all the foregoing possibilities, concentrate en- 
tirely on playwriting, so that these courses are really com- 
position practice directed towards a definite, supposedly 
quickly lucrative investment. 

The results are directly in line with the material con- 
sidered. From such courses come actors, dancers, direc- 
tors, scene designers, costume makers, playwrights, archi- 
tects, and keenly interested versatile dilletanti. These last 
are not to be scorned or disregarded for from their growing 
number will be recruited the better class of amateur work- 
ers, and the nucleus of the intelligent audiences who will 
either help change the professional theater, or find else- 
where their continual stimulus in dramatic themes. Al- 
ready in this country there are millions of them. 

As the emphasis placed by different institutions varies, 
so the material considered, and the methods pursued, differ 
as widely as the locations of the schools. Except for the 
quite restricted purpose of playwriting for the professional 
market, for general culture no aspect of educational drama- 
tics is a waste of time. 

Many courses in schools avowedly devoted to acting be- 
gin with pantomime, but hardly any two follow the same 
method or utilize the same material. Of course, one of 
the first essentials of dramatic appearance is control of 
the body. This mastery may be called the first element 
of the actor's technique. One school — it always seemed 





Photographs by Florence Hendershot 

The Arts Club, Chicago. Plays by Kenneth Sawyer 

Goodman. 

Above: The Game of Chess. 



Below : Dust of the Road. 







Photographs by Wooten-Moulton 

The Carolina Playmakers, University of North 

Carolina. 

Above: Dod Cast Ye Both, by Hubert Heffner. 

Below: Peggy, by Harold Williamson. 



Both plays are based on material of the tlistriet. 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 199 

to me that this plan was easy for instructors — assigned 
among its early appointments the reproduction before the 
class of some bit seen in real life. When this was pre- 
sented in pantomime the instructor and class were to guess 
the emotions behind the actions and the situation being 
depicted. Add to these difficulties of required attainment 
that the scene should delineate character and present a 
point or reach a climax, and you will have some faint idea 
of the distraction experienced by the novitiates who roamed 
the streets of New York straining their eyes to see some- 
thing they could reproduce. Make a list of all the possi- 
bilities which may occur — the railroad station, the sub- 
way, the elevated, the East Side, the steamship docks, the 
river boats, the restaurants, the cabarets, the moving pic- 
ture houses, automobiles, building sites, engineering proj- 
ects, the airplane — the surroundings are countless; but 
try to particularize some single event which might happen, 
and which might be effectively and clearly reproduced in 
pantomime, and you will appreciate the difficulty of this 
apparently innocent direction. 

Even after you have found a bit of actual life, can you 
be sure the spectators will understand it? Can you make 
it plain to them? How many screen stories could you fol- 
low through all the changes without the captions? 

Students who have experienced this search for actable 
material have described it as the most discouraging period 
of all their study. 

Another method of employing a pantomimic beginning 
is to choose some play of marked nature, as one acted in a 
kitchen, an office, a restaurant, a camp, a trench, a prison, 



200 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

upon a ship, or in some past time, as the French Revolution, 
the Civil War, the Roman Republic, an oriental festival. 
Then during the study of this play, the members of the 
class are required to present in pantomime, scenes suggested 
by its environment, its situations, its characters. The 
direct value of such preliminary exercises is that they con- 
tribute bits of good stage business to be incorporated later 
as the lines are delivered. Every director of amateurs who 
has tried to produce say a Moliere comedy knows how 
much time must first be spent in training amateurs to 
walk like ladies and gentlemen, how to " throw themselves 
into their clothes," how to bow, and how to walk without 
scraping their feet. Or in a modern comedy the time used 
in showing them how to pretend to eat or to drink tea, or 
to talk in dumbshow, or to join a group, or to announce a 
caller, or to sit down gracefully, or to leave a room, or to 
use the telephone expeditiously, is almost endless. 

Besides these realistic uses of pantomime there is a con- 
ventionalized historical system brought to the highest de- 
gree of perfection by the Italians and French. It is in 
French and Italian theaters that a spectator sees mimetic 
art raised to .certainty of effect by means of stabilized de- 
vices. To groups of spectators long trained in the con- 
vention the results are unerringly illuminating, to the un- 
initiated the general impression may be correct, although 
many of the fine details are unperceived. It is like trying 
to understand the enthusiasm of a Spanish bull-fight mob 
when you do not know the custom of the award of the 
bull's ear. In a training course in England I stood fasci- 
nated by the beauty of poise and the grace of gesture of a 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 201 

class of over forty men and women as they reproduced the 
formal gestures of the instructor. Riveting as the evolu- 
tions were, I must admit that if the phrases being inter- 
preted had not been continually repeated, " Mademoiselle 
is beautiful; Monsieur is splendid/' I might have thought 
some of the students were trying to indicate that some 
person had a moon face and that somebody else or the 
same person was stout around the waist. Many of the 
others were easier to apprehend as " Monsieur is rich, but 
I am broke," and " I love you! will you marry me? " 

As the intended thoughts grew in subtlety and the situa- 
tions became complicated by the inclusion of several char- 
acters I should have been totally mystified had not eyes 
and brain been aided by the names, dispositions, and rela- 
tionships of the persons being represented, the reinforcing 
music, and the running comments and directions of the 
instructor. 

With all its drawbacks and difficulties, some practice in 
pantomime is of inestimable value in educational dramatics 
designed to help acting interpretation, or sympathetic at- 
tendance in the theater. 

If the course is not a long, intensified, or diversified one, 
this first part, the pantomime, may be omitted as a distinct 
topic, and the work begin with another, here the second. 
This may be termed improvisation. Notice that pantomime 
tends to become reproductive, that it is fixed and formal. 
Observe a few screen stories to realize the truth of this. 
Much more self-expression, self-development comes from 
this second dramatic element. It entails much more valu- 
able brain exercise. While it must be based on observation 



202 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

and delineation, it embodies many elements of creative 
ability. Sir Frank R. Benson once told me that a good 
actor must be a human kodak. This is a neat phrase, of 
course, but it covers only part of the equpiment. Im- 
provisation is a workable device for developing the others. 

Situations in improvisation may be assigned by the in- 
structor, chosen by the student, or built up by the class. 
Besides demanding that the acted scene and the delivered 
speeches must show characterization, that they should have 
some point, and that they should produce a climax or con- 
clusion, there should be no restrictions of either material 
or method. Hints for securing these may be discussed at 
length. To secure point or climax or conclusion the device 
of planning backwards should be exemplified. This may 
be done by analyzing either a few actual scenes in plays, 
or suppositious circumstances suggested by observation. 
An entire class may depict variously the same theme. The 
following simple suggestions illustrate the plan. 

You are sitting at a table or desk. The telephone rings. 
You pick up the receiver. A person at the other end in- 
vites you to dinner. Deliver your part of the conversa- 
tion. 

i. Speak in your own character. 

2. Speak as a busy, quick-tempered old man in his dis- 
ordered office. 

3. Speak as a tired wife who hasn't had a relief for 
weeks from the drudgery of house-work. 

4. Speak as a young debutante who has been enter- 
tained every day for weeks. 

5. Speak as the office boy. 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 203 

6. Speak as an over-polite foreigner. 

7. Delineate some other kind of person. 

As you deliver the dialogues suggested by the exercises 
try to make your speeches sound natural. Talk as real 
people talk. Make the remarks conversational, or collo- 
quial. What things will make conversation realistic? In 
actual talk, people anticipate. Speakers do not wait for 
others to finish. They interrupt. They indicate opinions 
and impressions by facial expression and slight bodily 
movements. Tone changes as feelings change. 

Try to make your remarks convey to the audience the 
circumstances surrounding the dialogue. Let the con- 
versation make some point clear. Before you begin, deter- 
mine in your own mind the characterization you intend 
to present. Discuss from all possible angles the following 
situation. A girl buys some fruit from the keeper of a 
stand at a street corner. 

What kind of girl? Age? Manner of speaking? Cour- 
teous? Flippant? Well-bred? Slangy? Working girl? 
Visitor to town? 

What kind of man? Age? American? Foreigner? 
From what country? Dialect? Disposition? Suspicious? 
Sympathetic? 

Weather? Season of year? Do they talk about that? 
About themselves? Does the heat make her long for her 
home in the country? Does the cold make him think of 
his native Italy or Greece? Will her remarks change his 
short, gruff answers to interested questions about her 
home? Will his enthusiasm for his native land change her 
flippancy to interest in far-off romantic countries? How 



204 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

would the last detail impress the change, if you decide to 
have one? Might he call her back and force her to take a 
gift? Might she deliver an impressive phrase, then dash 
away as though startled by her exhibition of sympathetic 
feeling? 

These are mere suggestions. Two students might present 
the scene as indicated by these questions. Two others 
might show it as broadly comic, and end by having the 
girl — at a safe distance — triumphantly show that she had 
stolen a second fruit. That might give the fruit seller the 
cue to end in a tirade of almost inarticulate abuse, or he 
might stand in silence, expressing by his face the emo- 
tions surging over him. And his feeling need not be en- 
tirely anger, either. It might border on admiration for 
her amazing audacity, or pathetic helplessness, or comic 
despair, or determination to " get even " next time. 

Before you attempt to present any of the following sug- 
gestive exercises you should consider every possibility care- 
fully and decide definitely and consistently all the ques- 
tions that may arise concerning every detail. 

i. Have a man come into the room and try to induce 
the mistress of a house to have a telephone installed. Make 
the dialogue realistic and interesting. 

2. Have a girl demonstrate a vacuum cleaner (or some 
other appliance) to the mistress of the house. 

3. Have a man dictate a letter to a gum-chewing, fidg- 
ety, harumscarum stenographer. 

4. Have this stenographer tell the telephone girl about 
this. 

5. Show how a younger sister might talk at a baseball 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 205 

or football game to her slightly older brother who was 
coerced into bringing her with him. 

6. Show a fastidious woman at a dress goods counter, 
and the tired, but courteous clerk. Do not caricature, but 
try to give an air of reality to this. 

7. Show how two young friends who have not seen each 
other for weeks might talk when they meet again. 

8. A foreign woman speaking and understanding little 
English, with a ticket to Springfield, has by mistake boarded 
a through train which does not stop there. The conductor, 
a man, and woman try to explain to her what she must do. 

9. Have three or more different pairs of students repre- 
sent the girl and the fruit seller cited in the paragraphs pre- 
ceding these exercises. 

10. A young man takes a girl riding in a new automo- 
bile. Reproduce parts of the ride. 

11. A woman in a car or coach has lost or misplaced 
her transfer or ticket. Give the conversation between her 
and the conductor. 

12. Have various pairs of pupils reproduce the conver- 
sations of patrons of moving pictures. 

The next step is logically to short scenes from long plays. 
In such cases delineation is to a great extent fixed by the 
dramatist. One would imagine that a modern playwright 
alive to the vagaries of individual producers and perform- 
ers would leave nothing so important as characterization 
to appearance or chance. Yet there are always matters 
for individual decision. A striking one is this. The printed 
version of Lord Dunsany's Fame and the Poet contains no 
direction about the costume of the Lieutenant-Major who 



206 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

is calling upon a poet friend in London before he goes off 
to the theater. In one city an amateur actor asked the 
British consul. He said that British officers do not wear 
their uniforms except when in active service, but on the 
stage one famous actor had by his example created the 
convention of wearing the uniform. In all probability he 
meant Cyril Maude. At just that same time I asked Lord 
Dunsany the same question in another city. He said 
that by no means should the actor wear a uniform. 
Likewise in most performances of A. E. W. Mason's Green 
Stockings the British officer back from Somaliland wears 
mufti, or civilian clothes, but in a photograph of a uni- 
versity performance, he is in khaki. As in such a minor 
matter as costume so in the larger, essential matters of 
characterization, a performer may have to supply a con- 
ception from elements outside the play itself. 

When you speak lines from a play inject as much natural- 
ness and sincerity into your delivery as you can command. 
Speak the words as though they really express your own 
ideas and feelings. If you feel that you must exaggerate 
slightly because of the impression the remark is intended 
to make, rely more upon emphasis than upon any other de- 
vice to secure an effect. Never slip into an affected manner 
of delivering any speech. No matter what kind of acting 
you have seen upon amateur or professional stage, you 
must remember that moderation is the first essential of 
the best acting. Recall what Shakespeare had Hamlet say 
to the players. 

In taking part in a play you must do more than simply 
recite words spoken by some one other than yourself. You 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 207 

must really act like that person. This adds to the simple 
delivery of speeches all those other traits by which per- 
sons in real life are different from one another. Such com- 
plete identification of your personality with that of the? 
person you are trying to represent in a play results in char- 
acter delineation, or characterization. 

You may believe that you cannot represent an Indian 
chief or a British queen, or an Egyptian slave, or a secret- 
service agent, but if you will recall your childish pastime 
of day-dreaming you will see at once that you have quite 
frequently identified yourself with some one else, and in 
that other character you have made yourself experience the 
strangest and most thrilling adventures. When you study 
a role in a scene or play, use your imagination in that same 
manner. In a short time it will be easy for you to think 
as that other character would. Then you have become iden- 
tified with him. The first step in your delineation has 
been taken. 

Visualize in your mind's eye — your imagination — the 
circumstances in which that character is placed in the play. 
See yourself looking, moving, acting as he would. Then 
talk as that character would in those circumstances. Make 
him react as he would naturally in the situations in which 
the dramatist has placed him. 

Let us try to make this more definite. Suppose a youth 
is chosen to act the part of an old man. An old man does 
not speak as rapidly as a young man does. He will have to 
change the speed of his speech. But suppose the old man 
is moved to wrath, would his words come slowly? Would 
he speak distinctly or would he almost choke? 



208 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

The young woman who is delineating a foreigner must 
picture her accent and hesitation in speaking English. She 
would give to her face the rather vacant questioning look 
such a woman would have as the English speech flits about 
her, too quickly for her to comprehend all of it. 

The woman who tries to present a British queen in a 
Shakespeare play must not act as she does at a dinner 
party. Yet if that queen is stricken in her feelings as a 
mother, might not all the royal dignity melt away, and 
her Majesty act like any sorrowing woman? 

The dramatist may be very careful to set down clearly 
and accurately the traits, dispositions, actions of the people 
in his plays. In this second case the performer must try 
to carry out every direction, every hint of the dramatist. 
In the first case, he must search the lines of the play to 
glean every slightest suggestion which will help him to 
carry out the dramatist's intention. Famous actors of char- 
acters in Shakespeare's plays can give a reason for every- 
thing they show — at least, they should be able to do so— 
and this foundation should be a compilation of all the de- 
tails supplied by the play itself, and stage tradition of its 
productions. 

In early printed plays there are practically no descrip- 
tions of the characters. Questions about certain Shake- 
speare characters will never be solved to the satisfaction 
of all performers. For instance, how old is Hamlet in the 
tragedy? How close to madness did the dramatist expect 
actors to portray his actions? During Hamlet's fencing 
match with Laertes in the last scene the Queen says, " He's 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 209 

fat, and scant of breath." Was she describing his size, or 
meaning that he was out of fencing trim? 

Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Julius Caesar a de- 
tailed description of the appearance and manner of act- 
ing of one of the chief characters of the tragedy. 

Let me have men about me that are fat; 
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o 7 nights: 
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; 
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. 

******** 

Would he were fatter! But I fear him not: 

Yet if my name were liable to fear, 

I do not know the man I should avoid 

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much; 

He is a great observer, and he looks 

Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays, 

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music; 

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 

As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit 

That could be mov'd to smile at any thing. 

In As You Like It when the two girls are planning to 
flee to the forest of Arden, Rosalind tells how she will dis- 
guise herself and act as a man. This indicates to the actress 
both costume and behavior for the remainder of the comedy. 

Were it not better, 
Because that I am more than common tall, 
That I did suit me all points like a man? 
A gallant curtle-ax upon my thigh, 
A boar-spear in my hand; and — in my heart 
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will — 
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside, 



210 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

As many othei mannish cowards have 
That do outface it with their semblances 



In many cases Shakespeare clearly shows the performer 
exactly how to carry out his ideas of the nature of a man 
during part of the action One of the plainest instances 
of this kind of instruction is in Macbeth. The ambitious 
thane's wife is urging him on to murder his king. Her 
advice gives the directions for the following scenes. 

O never 

Shall sun that morrow see! 

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 

May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 

Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 

Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, 

But be the serpent under't. He that's coming 

Must be provided for: and you shall put 

This night's great business into my dispatch; 

Which shall to all our nights and days to come 

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. 

Modern dramatists are likely to be much more careful 
in giving advice about characterization. They insert a 
large number of stage directions covering this matter. 
Speed of delivery, tone and inflection, as well as under- 
lying feeling and emotion are minutely indicated. These 
lines from Lady Windermere's Fan leave nothing to indefi- 
nite guess. 

Duchess of Berwick 
Mr. Hopper, I am very angry with you. You have 
taken Agatha out on the terrace, and she is so delicate. 



> 



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Photographs by White 

Alice in Wonderland, dramatized by Alice Gerstenberg 
The Playhouse, Chicago. Designed by William 
Penhallow Henderson. 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 211 

Hopper 
(At left of center) Awfully sorry, Duchess. We 
went out for a moment and then got chatting together. 

Duchess 
(At center) Ah, about dear Australia, I suppose? 

Hopper 
Yes. 

Duchess 
Agatha, darling! (Beckons her over.) 

Agatha 
Yes, mamma! 

Duchess 
(Aside) Did Mr. Hopper definitely — 

Agatha 
Yes, mamma. 

Duchess 
And what answer did you give him, dear child? 

Agatha 
Yes, mamma. 

Duchess 
(Affectionately) My dear one! You always say the 
right thing. Mr. Hopper! James! Agatha has told 
me everything. How cleverly you have both kept 
your secret. 

Hopper 

You don't mind my taking Agatha off to Australia, 
then, Duchess? 

Duchess 

(Indignantly) To Australia? Oh, don't mention 
that dreadful vulgar place. 



212 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Hopper 
But she said she'd like to come with me. 

Duchess 
(Severely) Did you say that, Agatha? 

Agatha 
Yes, mamma. 

Duchess 
Agatha, you say the most silly things possible. 

In addition to definite directions at special times during 
the course of the dialogue, modern writers of plays de- 
scribe every character quite fully at the first entrance into 
the action. This gives the delineator of each role a work- 
ing basis for his guidance. Such directions carefully fol- 
lowed out assure the tone for the whole cast. They keep a 
subordinate part always in the proper relation to all others. 
They make certain the impression of the whole story as a 
consistent artistic development. They prevent misunder- 
standings about the author's aim. They provide that every 
character shall appear to be swayed by natural motives. 
They remove from the performance all suggestions of un- 
regulated caprice. 

Dramatists vary in the exactness and minuteness of such 
descriptive character sketches, but even the shortest and 
most general is necessary to the proper appreciation of every 
play, even if it is being merely read. When a student is 
assimilating a role for rehearsing or acting, these additions 
of the author are as important as the lines themselves. 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 213 

Excellent descriptions of characters are in the stage di- 
rections of most modern plays. Instructor and students 
should endeavor to secure variety of interest in roles. At 
first, assignments are likely to be determined by apparent 
fitness. The quiet youth is not required to play the part 
of the braggart. The retiring girl is not expected to im- 
personate the shrew. In one or two appearances it may 
be a good thing to keep in mind natural aptitude. 

Then there should be a departure from this system. Edu- 
cational development comes not only from doing what you 
are best able to do, but from developing the less-marked 
phases of your disposition and character. The opposite 
practice should be followed, at least once. Let the promi- 
nent class member assume a role of subdued personality. 
Let the timid take the lead. Induce the silent to deliver 
the majority of the speeches. You will be amazed fre- 
quently to behold the best delineations springing from such 
assignments. 

Such rehearsing of a play already studied should termi- 
nate the minute analysis in order to show the material for 
what it is — actable drama. It will vivify the play again, 
and make the characters live in your memory as mere read- 
ing never will. You will see the moving people, the grouped 
situations, the developed story, the impressive climax, and 
the satisfying conclusion. 

In dealing with scenes from a long play — whether linked 
or disconnected — students will always have a feeling of in- 
completeness. In a full-length play no situation is com- 
plete in itself. It is part of a longer series of events. It 
may finish one part of the action, but it usually merely 



2i 4 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

carries forward the plot, passing on the complication to 
subsequent situations. 

To deal with finished products should be the next en- 
deavor. There are hundreds of short plays suitable for 
class presentation in an informal manner. Most of them 
do not require intensive study, as does a great Greek or 
English drama, so their preparation may go on entirely 
outside the classroom. It should be frankly admitted that 
the exercises of delivering lines " in character " as here 
described is not acting or producing the play. That will 
come later. These preliminary exercises — many or few, 
painstaking or sketchy — are processes of training students 
to speak clearly, interestingly, forcefully, in the imagined 
character of some other person. The student must not 
wrongly believe that he is acting. 

Though the delivery of a complete short play may seem 
like a performance, both participants and audience, if there 
is any, must not think of it so. It is class exercise, subject 
to criticism, comment, improvement, exactly as all other 
class recitations are. 

Since the entire class has not had the chance to become 
familiar with all the short plays to be presented, some one 
should give an introductory account of the time and place 
of action. There might be added any necessary comments 
upon the characters. The cast of characters should be 
written upon the board, or distributed in typed programs. 

This exercise should develop the plot of the play, create 
suspense, impress the climax, and satisfactorily round off 
the play. In order to accomplish these important effects 
the participants will soon discover that they must agree 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 215 

upon certain details to be made most significant. This 
will lead to discussions about how to make these points 
stand out. In the concerted attempt to give proper em- 
phasis to some line late in the play it will be found neces- 
sary to suppress a possible emphasis of some line early in 
the action. To reinforce a trait of some person, another 
character may have to be made more self-assertive. 

To secure this unified effect which every play should 
make the persons involved will have to consider carefully 
every detail in lines and stage directions, fully agree upon 
what impression they must strive for, then heartily co- 
operate in attaining it. They must forget themselves to 
remember always that " the play's the thing." 

The following list will suggest short plays suitable for 
informal classroom training in dramatics. Most of these 
are also general enough in their appeal to serve for regular 
production upon a stage before a miscellaneous audience. 

Aldrich, T. B Pauline Pavlovna 

Baring, M .Diminutive Dramas 

Butler, E. P .The Revolt 

Cannan, G Everybody's Husband 

Dunsany, Lord Tents of the Arabs 

The Lost Silk Hat 

Fame and the Poet 

Fenn and Pryce 'Op-o-Me-Thumb 

Gale, Z .Neighbors 

Gerstenberg, A Overtones 

Fourteen 

Gibson, W. W .Plays in Collected Works 

Gregory, Lady. Spreading the News 

The Workhouse Ward 

Coats, etc. 



2 1 6 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Houghton, S The Dear Departed 

Phipps 

Jones, H. A Jler Tongue 

Kreymborg, A . . . .Mannikin and Minnikin 

Moeller, P ..Pokey 

A Road House in Arden 

O'Neill, E 'He 

Quintero, J. and S. A A Sunny Morning 

Rice, C The Immortal Lure 

Stevens, T. W Ryland 

Holbein at Blackfriars 
Sudermann, H .The Far- Away Princess 

Ffitzchen 
Synge The Shadow of the Glen 

Riders to the Sea 

Tchekoff, A .A Marriage Proposal 

Torrence, R. The Rider of Dreams 

Walker, S \N ever-t he-Less 

The Very Naked Boy 
Yeats, W. B „,Cathleen Ni Houlihan 

When roles are determined or assigned there enters into 
the studying the educative value of rapid, accurate memo- 
rizing. Anything delivered by the faddist pedagogues to 
the contrary notwithstanding, tfrere is a decided value for 
every person in ability to memorize. Various schemes for 
perfecting this mechanical ability have been described in 
the Chapter on Rehearsing. 

In the delivery of memorized lines of plays the instructor 
of a class in dramatics has the widest field for permanent 
effects. So much has been spoken and written about all 
the disagreeableness suggested by the term, " the American 
voice," that no amplification need be set down here. It 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 217 

would not be an inappropriate thing to have the beginner 
learn and comment on every precept of Hamlet's advice to 
the players. Beginning with the simple needs of pronun- 
ciation and enunciation, the training — never losing touch 
with these — should extend to mastery of diction, sense of 
rhythm, and beauty of utterance. Good prose has these 
qualities as well as blank verse, though training is easier 
when linked with the poetic form. There is no occasion 
here to lament the miserable delivery of blank verse upon 
our stage, until we have lamented more effectively the lack 
of any poetry at all. However in schools, both prose and 
verse can be made to yield lasting results of far-reaching 
significance. The student actress may never deliver a line 
from the professional stage, but if she marries she can in- 
fluence her immediate household by the charm and beauty 
of her speech. The school may get to be so renowned for 
results in speech betterment that it will attract interested 
school teachers. Think of the enormous influence which 
would be exerted if all the teachers of the nation learned 
to speak clearly, interestingly, and beautifully. 

So far this discussion has taken cognizance only of the 
acted side of the play. There may be in the class, or paral- 
lel to it, a group more interested in the other arts of the 
theater than in acting. What shall have been assigned 
to them during this training of the performers themselves? 
All the work so sketchily outlined here can easily be made 
to serve for them. At the same time that scenes are con- 
sidered for acting problems in scene designing may be dis- 
tributed to the student architects, costume designers, in- 



218 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

terior decorators, scene designers, and builders. A series 
of individual methods may be instigated to induce original 
self-expression and to help discover latent talent. Or severe 
restrictions may be imposed. The treatment assigned may 
be severely historical. Or it may prescribe only pylons, 
flats, and draperies. The sketches, finished models, and 
even constructed paraphernalia for a full-sized stage, all 
the elements of which were restricted to platforms and 
cubes, assigned by Josef Urban to a student group were 
an unusual contribution to such a scheme. Various other 
plans to follow will have been suggested by other portions 
of this book. A full set of costume plates or make-up 
sketches might also be prepared. Even furniture made 
to scale will help all the participants in a dramatic study 
project. 

If, as frequently happens, artists work more rapidly than 
actors, they can be kept busy with material not under 
preparation for presentation. While every play may be 
made to present problems — as for instance, Hamlet with 
permanent frames but moveable set pieces, and draperies 
and tapestries, or Richard III within permanent side walls 
— many of these are beyond students. Some of the follow- 
ing offer nice adjustments of opinions to text, of design to 
action, of originality to requirements, of style to fitness. 

i. Should the entire masque of Comus by Milton be 
acted out-of-doors? When presented on an indoors stage 
what should scene 2 be? Inside the palace of Comus? 
How then do the two Brothers get in? How and where 
do Sabrina and her attendant Nymphs rise? From a 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 219 

pool, or fountain? Might the stage show an exterior? 
Would the palace be on one side? The edge of the woods 
on the other? The banks of the river at the rear? Would 
such an arrangement make entrances, exits, dancing, acting, 
effective? Search until you have reasons for all your opin- 
ions. 

2. A Midsummer Night's Dream, scene 1. Interior? 
Exterior ? Color ? Lighting ? 

3. Hamlet, Act I, scene 5. Castle battlements? A 
graveyard? Open space in country some distance from 
castle? 

4. Comus, scene 3. 

5. The Tempest, Act I, scene 1. 

6. Twelfth Night, Act II, scene 3. 

7. Romeo and Jidiet, Act I, scene 1. 
Julius C&sar, Act III, scene 2. 
In a long, high-vaulted room, looking out upon a 

Roman garden where the cypresses rise in narrowing shafts 
from thickets of oleander and myrtle, is seated a company 
of men and women, feasting. 

William Sharp: The Lute-Flayer 
10. A room, half drawing-room, half study, in Lewis 
Davenant's house in Rockminister. Furniture eighteenth 
century, pictures, china in glass cases. An April afternoon 
in i860. 

George Moore: Elizabeth Cooper 
n. An Island off the West of Ireland. Cottage kitchen, 
with nets, oil-skins, spinning wheel, some new boards 
standing by the wall, etc. 

J. M. Synge: Riders to the Sea 



220 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

12. Loud music. After which the Scene is discovered, 
being a Laboratory or Alchemist's work-house. Vulcan 
looking at the register, while a Cyclope, tending the fire, to 
the cornets began to sing. 

Ben Jonson: Mercury Vindicated 

13. Rather an awesome picture it is with the cold blue 
river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses 
that grow along its banks. There are signs of a trodden 
slope and a ferry, and there's a rough old wooden shelter 
where passengers can wait; a bell hung on the top with 
which they call the ferryman. 

Calthrop and Barker: The Harlequinade 
Long before any play is produced there should be made 
a sketch or plan showing the stage settings. From this 
sketch a working model should be constructed. If it is in 
color it will reproduce the appearance of the actual stage. 
One important point is to be noted. Your sketch or model is 
merely a miniature of the real thing. If you have in it a 
splotch of glaring color only an inch long it will appear in 
the full-size setting about two feet long. A seemingly flat 
surface three by five inches in the design will come out 
six by ten feet behind the footlights. 

In educational dramatics rehearsals should be consid- 
ered as discussed in this book, whether the director be the 
instructor or a student from an advanced class. Produc- 
tions of educational undertakings are different from all 
others. In others the test of a performance is its effect 
upon the audience. In educational dramatics — while the 
reaction of the audience is important — it is overbalanced 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 221 

by the effect upon the students themselves, in critical power, 
in self-examination, in improvement of method, in ease of 
acting, in application of technique. A recognition of the 
attitude of an audience before a school performance — 
whether ordinary high school or professional drama school 
— is necessary to a weighing of all constituent elements 
of success. An audience which has paid for its seats is 
easier to impress than a " free " audience. The audience 
which has wanted to attend will be more responsive than 
the one induced by invitation. The " free-pass " audience, 
or its amateur " dead-head " or " paper " equivalent is 
most frigid of all. An educational institution, therefore, 
must consider its kinds of audiences much more carefully 
than the usual little theater group. Means should be de- 
vised to prevent the attendance of merely friends of the 
performers. Whether too candid or too lenient such per- 
sonal associates do not constitute a good audience. If the 
choice of play is correct and the acting reaches a high level 
it will not be long before a large number of exactly the 
right kind of persons will be attracted. The Carnegie In- 
stitute audience, which by the terms of the foundation must 
always be a non-paying one, has increased to some six 
times its original size. From it has developed directly the 
paying audience which supports the graduate organization, 
the Guild Players. The audience of the other most dis- 
tinctive school of drama, the 47 Workshop at Harvard is 
expected to take part in the educational development by 
filling in and returning blanks concerning productions. 
Persons who neglect to grant this small return for the privi- 
lege of attendance are dropped from the mailing lists. 



222 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

Unless the audience can become the cognate of the gen- 
eral public of the commercial theaters, acting before it has 
no special educational value for students. A play, a role 
must impress and interest because of its intrinsic appeal 
and merit. The smaller and fewer the adventitious aids to 
tolerance can be made, the better training does acting be- 
come. 

The corollary of the foregoing is that a single perform- 
ance is never enough for an amateur cast. One trial is no 
assurance of ability. In school productions it is a good 
practice to insist always upon an adherence to the dictum 
laid down in the chapter on Rehearsing that a dress re- 
hearsal should be exactly like a performance, except that 
the audience at the regular performance is either a gen- 
eral paying one, or a group gathered by invitation of the 
class or organization offering the play. It is extremely 
easy to secure as large, if a totally different audience, for 
the dress rehearsal. In case the evening audience is a pay- 
ing one, invite the members of the school to attend the 
dress rehearsal at a very small admission price. In case 
the evening performance is to an invited audience, ask to 
the dress rehearsal all the members of the school. There 
is no reason, if the play has been adequately rehearsed, 
why the dress rehearsal should not equal the performance. 
In many schools dress rehearsals are perfect in every de- 
tail. Appearing once before an audience insures ease at 
the second appearance, besides giving the amateur actors 
the feeling of having won twice as much recognition. Ease, 
speed, comfort, confidence, are secured for every person con- 
cerned, by this logical procedure. 



EDUCATIONAL DRAMATICS 223 

The actors and the director must be prepared for one 
detail of supreme importance. The two audiences will be 
radically different in their responses, and even when they 
agree in time of reaction, they will be differentiated en- 
tirely in degree and reason of reaction. Amateur perform- 
ers must be warned of this, and admonished to hold their 
characterizations, situations, and points, in spite of dress 
rehearsal experiences. Pathos will be effective to varying 
degrees, surprisingly far apart in their depth. Humor will 
be interpreted at contradictory points. Interest may rise 
in more rapid or more leisurely fashion. A dress rehearsal 
audience is having its curiosity satisfied. A regular audi- 
ence is having its interest aroused or its emotions stirred. 

This difference is true of a metropolitan audience. I 
have sat through the dress rehearsal of a comedy in a 
New York theater without hearing a single audible laugh 
from the fifty or seventy-five spectators. This difference 
of response is being cited to discount the reception of new 
plays by a first-night audience in New York, because it 
is made up largely of newspaper critics and professional 
theatrical workers. 

For real knowledge of acting and producing the play 
should be repeated frequently. So far as the actors are 
concerned such repetitions will give them chances for self- 
examination. Having reduced the acting to the reflexive 
state they can concenter their consciousness upon the means 
employed and the ends attained — or missed. With ease 
of acting should come certainty of effect. With certainty 
of effect should come economy of effort. With economy 
of effort comes mastery of technique. Repetition makes 



224 PRODUCING IN LITTLE THEATERS 

criticism valuable. A report on a performer's exhibition 
after one performance is almost valueless. What will he 
do with the change suggested if he has no opportunity of 
incorporating it in a subsequent repetition of the same 
play? It is even doubtful if any criticism is listened to 
carefully enough, or apprehended clearly enough, to make 
any more than a fleeting impression. When, under the 
temperamental or nervous stress of a new production, it 
is listened to at all and fully understood, it is likely to be 
resented as a derogatory remark. Flung aside contemptu- 
ously it certainly will have no effect upon future inter- 
pretations. When, however, there are many performances, 
there are chances that sane and legitimate corrections will 
show in intelligent modifications of scenes. 

When the sum total of all these detailed warnings and 
corrections has become part of the performers' instinctive 
method of attacking new roles, then it may be said that 
their student training is almost over, and they should become 
developing actors. 



APPENDIX 



TWO HUNDRED PLAYS SUITABLE FOR 
AMATEURS 

NOTE 

The following list is merely suggestive, but it does include a 
specimen of almost every kind of play within the general range 
of amateur groups. Many successes of certain organizations 
would be entirely unsuited to others. It is hoped that the brief 
annotations will help determine choices. As intimate theaters 
indulge in rather startling novelties beginners are here advised 
that many frequently-produced plays depend directly upon a 
highly developed sophistication of the audiences. 

A — One Hundred Full-Length Plays 

Andreev, L. The Sabine Women. 3 A. Large cast. A 
daring, farcical treatment of an interesting topic. Not for 
unsophisticated audiences. Drama, 19 14. 

Aristophanes. Lysistrata. Large cast. Old comedy 
much used now to satirize woman's rights movement. May- 
be treated in a score of original manners. For sophisticated 
only. Samuel French. 

Bahr, Herman. The Master. 3 A. 9 m. 3 f. Excellent 
play, dealing with the forceful man. One interior. All roles 
good. If used, the translation should be corrected from the 
original; the scene restored to its European country. For 
sophisticated only. Nicholas Brown. 

Baring, Maurice. The Green Elephant., 4 A. 6 m. 4 f. 
3 interiors. An early, well-constructed theft mystery. Bet- 
ter than many later professional successes. Amateurs can 
produce this effectively. Constable and Co. 

Barker, Granville. The Madras House. 4 A. 8 m. 12 f. 
Extras. Modern comedy. Not too easy. Contains some 

227 



228 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

sure theatrical devices. Some roles exacting. For experi- 
enced players, and sophisticated audiences. 

Mitchell Kennerley. 

— The Harlequinade. Five scenes. Varying cast. Pos- 
sible with simple artistic settings. The spirit of comedy 
through the ages. Whimsical. Little, Brown and Co. 

Barrie, James M. Alice Sit-by-the-Fire. 3 A. 3 m. 6 f. 
Charming comedy. Leading woman must be good actress. 
Two interior sets. Quite effective. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— What Every Woman Knows. (About her husband.) 4 
A. 5 m. 4 f. Extras. Sets elaborate. Two roles fairly 
difficult. Good play. 

— The Admirable Crichton. 4 A. 7 m. 6 f . Sets difficult. 
Roles excellent. Frequently produced by amateurs. An 
English butler takes care of his master's family wrecked on 
an island. 

Bennett, Arnold. The Great Adventure. 4 A. 15 m. 3 f. 
4 interiors. While not a strong story this is fairly effective. 
Artist lets world believe he died. Good acting will carry it. 

— The Title. 3 A. 4 m. 4 f. This is a better comedy on 
class feeling in England. Not too difficult. 

— Milestones. 3 A. 9 m. 6 f. A good play for actors of 
tried ability, sure of gaining effects. Good theme. Presents 
three generations; the characters age greatly between acts. 
Not for novices. 

Bernstein, Henri. The Thief. 3 A. 5 m. 2 f. Good de- 
lineation of a strong situation. Two roles exacting. For 
fairly experienced amateurs. Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Besier, Rudolph. Don. 3 A. 4 m. 5 f. Rapid fire situa- 
tions. 'Good characters. Quite within ability of amateurs. 

Duffield and Co. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 229 

— Lady Patricia. 3 A. 7 m. 3 f. Excellent comedy. Few 
roles exacting. 2 sets, 1 fairly difficult. If done properly 
this is always effective. 

Brighouse, H. Hobson's Choice. 4 A. 7 m. 5 f. Genre 
study of crafty Lancaster work people. Dialect presents dif- 
ficulty. Sets fairly difficult. Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Calderon, G. The Fountain. 3 A. 12 m. 6 f. Extras. 
One interior. Excellent roles. English comedy with pur- 
pose. Social reform acts like a boomerang. Not difficult. 

Go wans and Gray. 

Chapin, Harold. Art and Opportunity., 3 A. 5 m. 2 f. 
2 sets; can be played in one. Good characters, situations. 
Maneuvers of a fascinating woman. 

American Play Co., N. Y. 

Chesterton, G. K. Magic. 3 A. 6 m. 1 f. Only 2 sets. 
Effective if the proper atmosphere of supernatural influence 
can be produced. All parts good. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

Da vies, H. H. The Mollusc. 3 A. 2 m. 2 f. Good com- 
edy of character. One interior. Good acting required, but 
suitable for most amateurs who know something of modern 
stage performances. Baker and Co. 

— Lady Epping's Lawsuit. 3 A. 12 m. 7 f. Extras. In- 
teriors. Large cast. Satirical comedy. Extravagant situa- 
tions. Almost acts itself. 

Dumas, Alexandre. Marriage of Convenience. 4 A. 4 m. 
2 f. Excellent costume comedy. Small cast. One set, in- 
terior. Long popular. Samuel French. 

Dunsany, Lord. The Gods of the Mountain. 3 A. 10 m. 
5 f . The best known play of this dramatist. Costumes, set- 
ting, lighting offer opportunities for novel and picturesque 
treatment. The stone gods come to life to punish. 



230 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

Ervine, St. John. Jane Clegg. 3 A. 4 m. 3 f. One in- 
terior. Drab but excellent. Leading woman good role, re- 
quires finished acting. A humble wife, yet " captain of her 
soul." Henry Holt and Company. 

— John Ferguson. 3 A. 5 m. 2 f . One interior set. Tense 
situation, remarkably well developed. Not for beginners, 
but possible for sincere, experienced performers. 

Euripides. The Trojan Women. 3 m. 4 f. Chorus, etc. 
Powerful tragedy showing horrors of war. Cast may be 
large or small. 1 set. Makes a strong appeal. 

Longmans, Green and Co. 

Fitch, Clyde. The Truth. 4 A. 5 m. 4 f. 2 interiors. 
Excellent treatment of a good theme. Some roles exacting. 
Successful on professional stage. Samuel French. 

France, Anatole. Crinquebille. 3 A. 10 m. 4 f. Extras. 
Vivid character study of old French huckster. Several 
good roles, but the lead demands finished character acting. 
Two sets. Samuel French. 

Galsworthy, J. The Pigeon. 3 A. 12 m. 2 f. While 
hardly more than a character study amateurs can make this 
telling. Two parts rather difficult. Not for all audiences. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

— Strife. 3 A. Some 30 roles. Extras. The labor ques- 
tion. Most audiences respond to this. The acting is not too 
exacting. 

— The Silver Box. 3 A. 3 interiors. Large cast. Com- 
edy. Lighter in substance than these others, but good ma- 
terial for production. Contrast of classes. 

Gates, E. The Poor Little Rich Girl. 3 A. 15 m. 10 f. 
Fancy and fact combined. Several scenes. Chances for 
original stage sets. Good. Grosset and Dunlap. 

Gogol, N. V. The Inspector-General. 4 A. Very large 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 231 

cast. Good expose of grafting city affairs. Characters, in- 
cidents good. Long a popular play. Alfred A. Knopf. 

Goldsmith, Oliver. She Stoops to Conquer. 5 A. 6 m. 4 f. 
Extras. One of the best costume plays for amateurs. 
Most frequently produced by schools. 

Hankin, St. John. The Cassttis Engagement. 4 A. 6 m. 
8 f. A mistaken engagement is saved by showing the man 
what his fiancee is really like. Good acting parts. 

— The Charity That Began at Home. 4 A. 6 m. 6 f . 2 in- 
teriors. An enthusiast actually tries to put an idealistic 
doctrine into practice. Undesirables at a house party. 
Laughable. 

Harcourt, Cyril. A Pair of Silk Stockings. 3 A. 8 m. 5 f. 
Comedy. 2 interiors. Laughable if played in the proper 
spirit. A professional success. Dodd, Mead and Co. 

Hastings, B. Macdonald. The New Sin. All men parts. 
Not a pleasant story, but effective. Novelty of cast should 
carry performance. Samuel French. 

Hazelton, G. and Benrimo. The Yellow Jacket. 3 A. 
Some 27 roles. Delightful Chinese play produced in novel 
manner. Little scenery required. Lines and incidents carry 
the play. Bobbs-Merrill Co. 

Hewlett, Maurice. Pan and the Young Shepherd. 2 A. 6 
m. 9 f. Pastoral. Good also for outdoors. Grouping pic- 
turesque. William Heinemann. 

Houghton, Stanley. Hindle Wakes. 3 A. 4 m. 5 f. Two 
interiors. Effective play with new turn to familiar situation. 
Requires sincere acting. Quite possible for most mature 
amateurs. For sophisticated audiences. Luce and Co. 

Housman, Laurence and Barker, Granville. Prunella. 3 
A. Charming fantasy. Costumes. One set. May include 
many people. Requires proper treatment for atmosphere. 

Little, Brown and Co. 



232 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

Housman, Laurence. The Chinese Lantern. 3 A. 6 m. 2 
f. Extras. Oriental interior. Every role good. Can be 
made beautiful. Can be played by all-girl cast. Delightful 
fantasy. Frequently produced by schools and colleges. 

Samuel French. 

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. 3 A. 4 m. 4 f . Children. 
One interior. Most frequently acted play by this master 
of stage situation. Leading role difficult. Play can be made 
effective if acted in proper key. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— Pillars of Society. 4 A. 10 m. 9 f. One interior. An 
interesting arraignment of smug hypocrisy unmasked after 
years of apparent security. Not too difficult, though it must 
be conscientiously acted. Good for all audiences. 

James, Henry. The Reprobate. 3 A. 6 m. 4 f. Usual 
English interior. Excellent farce-comedy. Not too easy, 
but worth doing well. Recently produced successfully in 
England. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Jerome, Jerome K. Fanny and the Servant Problem, also 
called Lady Bantock., 4 A. 5 m. 6 f. Extras. One in- 
terior. Excellent in every respect. Frequently produced by 
amateurs. Samuel French. 

— Miss Hobbs. 4 A. 6 m. 5 f. Acting not difficult, but 
one set in cabin of boat. A good play for amateurs of some 
practice. 

— Passing of the Third Floor Back. Excellent character 
study. One interior. Lead difficult. Other roles not. Can 
be effective. 

Jones, Henry Arthur. The Lie. 4 A. 5 m. 5 f . Contrast 
between two sisters. Rather drab story. Excellent as play. 
Roles require good acting. Sets not easy. 

George H. Doran Co. 

— The Liars. 4 A. 10 m. 6 f. Bright comedy of English 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 233 

society. Not too easy to act. Effective. Sets fairly dif- 
ficult. Samuel French. 

— Mary Goes First. 3 A. 8 m. 4 f. Social jealousies. 
Leading woman good role for finished actress. Not too dif- 
ficult otherwise. Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Jonson, Ben. The Sad Shepherd. 15 m. 6 f. Excellent 
for outdoors also. Poetic idyl. Frequently produced by 
schools and colleges. Amateurs could easily present this as 
a novel contrast. E. P. Dutton and Co. 

Kalidasa. Sakuntala. Some 30 roles. In cut form a 
good series of scenes. If scenery be used many changes re- 
quired. Always worth producing. Chance for artistic ori- 
ginality. Everyman Library. 

Lyly, John. Alexander and Campaspe. 24 m. (or fewer) 
2 f. Elizabethan comedy of Greek plot. May be made at- 
tractive by pictorial appeal. Girls alone might do it. 

Mackaye, Percy. A Thousand Years Ago. 4 A. 9 m. 2 
f. Many extras. Story slight. Costumes, incidents carry 
the play. Several sets. Stage pictures may be beautiful. 

Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Masefield, John. The Tragedy of Nan. 3 A. 8 m. 5 f. 
Strong, stark story of rural England over a century ago. 
Requires careful producing, excellent acting. 

Mitchell Kennerley. 

Mason, A. E. W. Green Stockings. 4 A. 4 m. 5 f . Two 
interiors ; may be played in one only. All roles good. Older 
sister invents hypothetical suitor who appears in the flesh. 

Samuel French. 

Maugham, S. The Tenth Man. 3 A. 10 m. 3 f. He is an 
honest one. Strong. The guile of politics. Setting rather 
difficult. Drama Pub. Co. 

— Lady Frederick. 3 A. 8 m. 5 f. Comedy of English so- 



234 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

ciety. 2 sets. A few of the roles exacting. Requires cor- 
rect tone. Samuel French. 

Milne, A. A. Belinda. 3 A. 3 m. 3 f. Supposed widow, 
presenting daughter as niece, keeps two suitors dangling. 
Husband returns. Delightful comedy. All roles good. 

Alfred A. Knopf. 

Moffett, G. When Bunty Pulls the Strings. 3 A. 5 m. 
5 f. Extras. Realistic pictures of canny Scots. Good 
comedy. Dialect the chief difficulty. Good character parts. 

Sanger and Jordan. 

Moliere. Doctor in Spite of Himself. 3 A. 8 m. 3 f. 2 
sets. Good acting parts. One of the best plays for ama- 
teurs. Parts almost carry themselves. 

— The Miser. 5 A. 10 m. 4 f. Extras. French interior. 
Costumes, 17th Century. Some roles require excellent act- 
ing. Worth producing. 

— Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. 5 A. (or fewer) 11 m. 4 f. 
Extras. One set, interior. Music, dancing, may be included. 
Not difficult. Conclusion an oriental spectacle. Excellent 
for schools, colleges. 

Molnar, F. The Devil. 3 A. 7 m. 7 f. Novel. Excel- 
lent. For sophisticated audiences. Leading man difficult 
to act. Mitchell Kennerley. 

Noyes, Alfred. Sherwood. 5 A. 22 roles. Extras. Out- 
door pageant-play. Good to introduce large groups. Fre- 
quently given. Good for community purposes. 

F. A. Stokes Co. 

O'Neill, Eugene. Beyond the Horizon. 3 A. 6 m. 2 f. 
1 child. 2 sets. Distinctive tragedy of grim American life. 
Contrast of two brothers; each does the wrong thing. Lead- 
ing role difficult. Boni and Liveright. 

Parker, Louis N. The Aristocrat. 3 A. 15 m. 5 f. Ex- 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 235 

tras. Reign of Terror. Large cast. 3 sets. Leading role 
excellent. Several require finished acting. John Lane. 

Peabody, Josephine Preston. The Piper. 4 A. 24 roles. 
Though sets are rather difficult, amateurs can produce this. 
Leading role rather difficult. 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Peele, George. Arraignment of Paris. 5 A. (or fewer) 17 
m. 24 f. Suitable also for outdoors. Beautiful costumes, 
groupings, dances. Should be treated as masque. 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Pinero, Arthur Wing. The Gay Lord Quex. 4 A. 4 m. 
10 f. Extras. A popular, good comedy. Settings rather 
elaborate. Always effective. A few roles exacting. 

Baker and Co. 

— The Amazons. 3 A. 7 m. 5 f . Farcical romance. Wood- 
land, and gymnasium interior. Three daughters raised as 
boys attract unexpected suitors and revolt from masculin- 
ity to their own charming sex. Roles and situations good. 
Always effective. Not difficult. 

— Trelawney of the Wells. 3 A. Large cast. 4 easy in- 
teriors. Costumes of i860. Sentimental; but effective if 
properly acted. 

Robertson, F. W. David Garrick. 3 A. 9 m. 3 f. Sim- 
ple interiors. Costumes of 18th Century make attractive 
stage pictures. Leading role good acting part. 

Penn Pub. Co. 

Robinson, L. The White-Headed Boy. 3 A. 5 m. 7 f . 1 
interior. An Irish family has tried to make a genius of a 
stupid son. They are outwitted. Good comedy. Excellent 
roles. Easy to produce. T. Fisher Unwin. 

Rostand, Edmond. The Romancers (also called Fantas- 
ticks). 3 A. 5 m. 1 f. Extras. " Costumes may be any- 



236 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

thing, provided they are beautiful." One garden set. De- 
lightful fantasy; successful. Baker and Co. 

Sardou, Victorien. A Scrap of Paper. 3 A. 6 m. 6 f. 
Old-fashioned, but still good. Situations and roles can be 
so produced as to interest and hold audiences that are not 
too familiar with the play. Baker and Co. 

Shaw, G. Bernard. Candida. 3 A. 4 m. 2 f . One set, in- 
terior. Requires good acting. Every role a good one. 

Brentano. 

— You Never Can Tell. 4 A. 6 m. 4 f . Farcical expose of 
parents and children. This almost carries itself. Sets dif- 
ficult. 

— Pygmalion. 5 A. 7 m. 7 f . Extras. Excellent. Requires 
excellent acting. Sets difficult. Parts good. 

— Getting Married. 8 m. 5 f. One set. If divided into 3 
acts as on professional stage this will please thoughtful so- 
phisticated audiences. Acting rather difficult. 

Sheridan, J. School for Scandal. 5 A. 12 m. 4 f. Ex- 
tras. Excellent costumed play. Not for sophisticated thea- 
ter goers. Good for schools. Many sets. 

Sigurjonsson, J. Eyvind of the Hills. 4 A. 7 m. 5 f. 
Novel Icelandic story. Sets rather difficult. Stage pictures 
beautiful. Tragic. Two exacting roles. 

American-Scandinavian Foundation. 

Sophocles. Antigone. 5 m. 3 f. Chorus, etc. Single set- 
ting. Affecting Greek tragedy. May be done with Men- 
delssohn's music sung and danced by chorus. May be done 
by girls only. Baker, etc. 

Stevens, Thomas Wood. Pageant of the Italian Renais- 
sance. 52 m. 2 f. Beautiful spectacle, admitting of elabo- 
rate costuming, grouping. Effective out of doors also. Blank 
verse. Characters presented in novel manner. 

A. C. McClurg. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 237 

Sudermann, Herman. Magda. 4 A. 6 m. 8 f. Strong; 
tense. Leading woman requires excellent acting. Can be 
effectively done. For sophisticated audiences. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Sutro, Alfred. The Two Virtues. 4 A. 3 m. 5 f. Mod- 
ern English comedy. 2 settings. Requires just the proper 
kind of acting to make impressions. Brentano. 

* — The Perplexed Husband. 4 A. 3 m. 4 f . 2 interiors. 
Satire on advanced feminist ideas. The husband duplicates 
the wife's opinions. Not difficult. Effective. 

Synge, J. M. The Playboy of the Western World. 3 A. 
7 m. 5 f. Extras. Excellent Irish farce-comedy. Not too 
difficult. One interior set. Frequently produced. 

Luce and Co. 

Tarkington, Booth. Monsieur Beaucaire. 3 A. 14 m. 7 
f. Romantic comedy of Bath in time of Beau Nash. Park 
and 3 interiors. Excellent acting roles. Colorful costumes 
and romantic situations carry this. Not too difficult. 

Baker and Co. 

Thoma, Ludwig. Moral. 3 A. 9 m. 7 f. Extras. An 
attack on smug self-righteousness. Plot not too original, 
but situations and roles good. Not too difficult. For so- 
phisticated audiences. Alfred A. Knopf. 

Thomas, Augustus A. Her Husband's Wife. 3 A. 3 m. 
3 f. One interior. Amusing cure of the too solicitous wife. 
All parts good. If well played, effective; if not, dull. 

Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Upward, Allen. Paradise Found. 3 A. 10 m. 6 f. Ex- 
tras. What would happen if all the ideas of G. Bernard 
Shaw were carried out. A reductio ad absurdum of Utopian 
schemes for the future. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 

Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. 3 A. 5 



238 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

m. 4 f. Always effective. Situations almost act themselves. 
Be sure it is somewhat of a novelty for your audience. 

Luce and Co. 

— Lady Windemere's Fan. 4 A. 7 m. 9 f. Better play 
than preceding. More difficult. Actors must seem perfectly 
natural in their social relations. Leading woman difficult 
role. 

Williams, Jesse Lynch. Why Marry? 3 A. 7 m. 3 f. One 
set. All roles good. Humorous study of problems of vari- 
ous kinds of marriages. Amateurs can make a good pro- 
duction of this. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Yeats, W. B. The Unicorn from the Stars. 3 A. 8 m. 2 
f. An Irish uprising based on the prophecy of a beggar. 
After one night of pillage a bitter ending. Good types. Can 
be made effective. The Macmillan Co. 

Zamacois, Miguel. The Jesters. 4 A. 13 m. 2 f. Ro- 
mantic, poetic. Costumes, settings of 1557, beautiful. 
Fairly difficult. 4 sets. Brentano. 

Zangwill, Israel. The Melting Pot. 4 A. 5 m. 4 f. The 
American assimilation of the alien. Sets fairly difficult. 
Appeal good. Requires good acting. 

The Macmillan Co. 

B — One Hundred One-Act Plays 

Akins, Zoe. The Magical City. 7 m. 2 f. The lure of 
the irregular life of New York. Its influence upon a young 
artist. Interior set. Not too easy, but effective. For so- 
phisticated audiences. ( Forum, 19 16. 

Aldis, Mary. Mrs. Pat and the Law. 2 m. 2 f. 1 boy. 
Amusing Irish family in the slums. Requires one good 
child. Father and mother good acting parts. Uniformly 
successful. Duffield and Co. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 239 

Andreev, L. Love of One's Neighbor. Large cast. One 
requirement of setting slightly difficult. Effect good. Sur- 
prise ending. Egmont Arens. 

Augier, Emile. The Post Scriptum. 1 m. 1 f. Both 
roles good. Modern interior. Bright comedy. Frequently 
produced. Samuel French. 

Barrie, James M. The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. 2 
m. 4 f. The best English play on the War. 3 scenes. One 
old character woman requires finished pathos. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— The Twelve Pound Look. 2 m. 2 f . A bore of a man of 
affairs sees in his second young wife's eyes the look that led 
his first wife to independence. Good, if well acted. 

Baring, Maurice. Katherine Parr. 1 m. 2 f. A farcical 
scene between Henry VIII and his wife over the eggs and 
coffee. Always effective. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 

— The Aulis Difficulty. 2 m. 4 f. A comedy, irreverent 
treatment of a well-known Greek episode. Exterior. If 
beautifully set the contrasting farce is all the better. 

Beach, L. The Clod. 4 m. 1 f. Civil War. Interior. 
Strong conclusion. Successful by amateurs and in vaude- 
ville. Strong part for woman. 

Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Benavente, Jacinto. His Widow's Husband. 4 m. 3 f. 
Successfully presented by many amateurs. Modern Spanish 
interior. Good roles. Amusing situation. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— No Smoking. 2 m. 2 f. Extras. European train com- 
partment. Farce. Chance for original setting. 

Drama, 191 7. 

Bernard, Tristan. French without a Master. 5 m. 2 f. 
Reliable; frequently performed series of laughable complica- 



240 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

tions of bogus interpreter who speaks no French. Not dif- 
ficult. Samuel French. 

Binyon, Laurence. Paris and CEnone. 3 m. 4 f. Tragic 
love story. Exterior. Beautiful verse play. Serves excel- 
lently as contrast m modern bill. Constable and Co. 

Brown, Alice. Joint Owners in Spain. Three old women 
in the poor house. Extremely effective. Frequently pro- 
duced. Good character parts. Baker and Co. 

Bynner, Witter. The Little King. 2 m. 1 f. 2 children. 
Fairly effective incident of the French Revolution. Verse. 
Requires two good children. Mitchell Kennerley. 

Calderon, George. The Little Stone House. 5 m. 2 f. 
Russian living-room. A mother has been saving money to 
erect a tomb above the supposed grave of her son. He re- 
turns from Siberia, a base convict. She informs the police. 
Strong, tense situation. Not too Russian for westerners. 
Successfully produced. Sidgwick and Jackson. 

Cannan, Gilbert. Everybody's Husband. 1 m. 5 f. Girl's 
bedroom. Dainty treatment; humorous criticisms of ordi- 
nary opinions. Always effective. Huebsch. 

D'Annunzio, G. Dream of an Autumn Sunset. Several 
women. Tragic, highly-colored medieval theme, on supersti- 
tion of harming an enemy by melting an effigy. Setting 
rather difficult. Poet-Lore, Vol. 15. 

Davis, Richard Harding. Blackmail. 3 m. 1 f. Tense 
melodrama of fairly old fashion, but still effective. Easy 
interior. In Page, B. Writing for Vaudeville. 

Dell, Floyd. The Angel Intrudes. 3 m. 1 f. 2 sets. Not 
difficult. Effective satire. Easily acted. 

Egmont Arens. 

DeMille, William. Food. 2 m. 1 f. An amusing satire 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 241 

on the High Cost of Living. Successfully produced in 
vaudeville. Easily produced. Samuel French. 

Down, Oliphant. The Maker of Dreams. 2 m. 1 f . Fan- 
tasy. Can be made beautiful, dainty. Requires lightness 
of presentation. Samuel French. 

Dunsany, Lord. Fame and the Poet. 2 m. 1 f . A clever 
attack upon the world's treatment of its artists. A new 
turn to the theme. Easily acted. 

Atlantic Monthly, 19 19. 

— The Glittering Gate. A dialogue outside the Gate of 
Heaven. Two criminals, and their discovery. Setting can 
be remarkably unique. Mitchell Kennerley. 

— The Lost Silk Hat. 5 m. Farcical situation for men. 
House exterior. Always effective. Frequently acted. 

— The Queen's Enemies. 9 m. 2 f. Extras. A queen of 
old Egypt traps her enemies in a chamber below the Nile. 
Spectacular tragedy. Excellent chance for setting. 

Luce and Co. 

— A Night at an Inn. 8 m. One of the best one-act 
tragedies. English interior. Oriental god regains a stolen 
jewel. Sunwise Turn, N. Y. 

Evreinov, N. Theater of the Soul. 5 m. 4 f. Unique. 
Not for novices. Staging, acting difficult. For sophisticated 
people. Egmont Arens. 

Fenn and Pryce. 'Op-o-Me-Thumb. 1 m. 5 f. Good 
character parts. One strong girl role. Laundry interior. 
Humorous, pathetic. Samuel French. 

France, Anatole. The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife. 
7 m. 2 f. Uproarious comedy made famous by its unique 
stage settings. Just as good if simply set. Early French 
costumes. John Lane. 

Fulda, Ludwig. By Ourselves. Practically a dialogue. 



242 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

The much entertaining husband wishes guests would not ar- 
rive. Poet-Lore, Vol. 23. 

Gale, Zona. Neighbors. 2 m. 6 f. Frequently produced. 
Homely picture of interplay of feeling in rural community. 
Secures response. Huebsch. 

Gerstenberg, Alice. Overtones. 4 f. Not difficult. Ef- 
fective. Attractive interior. Successful for amateurs and 
vaudeville. Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson. On the Threshold. 1 m. 2 f. 
Cottage interior. Poetic. Not dramatic. Could serve as 
interlude. Macmillan and Co. 

• — Mates. 1 m. 2 f. Cottage interior. Poetry. Mother 
and sweetheart cannot keep miner from the pit and his 
mates. 

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. 3 m. 2 f. A stark drama of dull 
life in our middle west. Always effective. Kitchen interior. 

Frank Shay. 

— and Cook, G. C. Suppressed Desires. 1 m. 2 f. A 
satire on psycho-analysis. 2 scenes. Easily acted. Both of 
these frequently produced. They make good contrasts. 

Frank Shay. 

Goodman, E. Eugenically Speaking. 3 m. 1 f. A girl 
carries out the principle to the consternation of her family. 
A good farcical situation. Frequently acted. 

Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Goodman, K. S. and Hecht, Ben. The Hero of Santa 
Maria. 4 m. 3 f. Extras. Ordinary interior. Excellent 
satire on small town matters. Frank Shay. 

— Dust of the Road. 3 m. 1 f . Christmas play. A chance 
visitor awakens a dormant conscience. Delicate evocation 
of the mysterious border-land of reality. 

Stage Guild, Chicago. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 243 

Gregory, Lady. Hyacinth Halvey. 4 m. 2 f . Street be- 
fore a post-office, small Irish town. A good play for ama- 
teurs. Dialect not beyond them. Frequently performed. 

Samuel French. 

— The Gaol Gate. 1 m. 2 f . Outside a prison. Requires 
careful acting to make impression. Quite within amateur 
range. 

Hankin, St. John. The Constant Lover. 1 m. 1 f. A 
dialogue. Constant means constantly in love — not neces- 
sarily with the same girl. John Lane. 

— The Burglar Who Failed. 1 m. 2 f. Girl's bedroom. 
She tames a fierce looking timid amateur thief. Easy. 

Hellem, Valcros, and d'Estoc. Sabotage. 2 m. 2 f . Ex- 
tras. Tense strike situation. Should be well acted. Easy 
interior. Has been effective in the original French, and in 
English. Dramatist, 191 5. 

Houghton, Stanley. The Dear Departed. 3 m. 3 f . Ex- 
cellent comedy. Grandfather's heirs squabble for his prop- 
erty — too soon. Samuel French. 

— Fancy Free. 2 m. 2 f. A satire on the triangle. Phil- 
andering husband and flirting wife brought together. 

Izumo, Takeda. Bushido, also called Matsuo, and The 
Pine Tree. 18 roles. Extras. Tragic incident of Japanese 
loyalty. Requires skill in producing its effects. Chance for 
beautiful set, costumes, stage pictures. Fairly large cast. 

Duffield and Co. 

Jones, Henry Arthur. Her Tongue. 2 m. 2 f. Ex- 
travagant, but laughable. Man returns to secure wife. The 
one recommended talks too much. Both leading roles good. 

George H. Doran Co. 

Kreymborg, Alfred. Mannikin and Minnikin. An inter- 
esting dialogue. Two figures on a mantle. Novel contrast. 

Others, N. Y. 



244 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

Langner, Laurence. Another Way Out. 2 m. 3 f. Ar- 
tist's studio. All roles good. A farcical treatment of a 
Bohemian menage. For sophisticated audiences. 

Frank Shay. 

Mackaye, Percy. Chuck. 3 m. 1 f. Good situation of 
rebellion against Puritan restraint. Exterior. Requires 
good acting. Duffield and Co. 

Matterlinck, Maurice. The Intruder. 3 m. 5 f. In- 
terior. Tragic. Requires perfect atmosphere. Rather dif- 
ficult. Grandfather part demanding. Has been done effec- 
tively. Boni and Liveright. 

— The Miracle of S. Anthony. 8 m. 3 f. Satire with a 
good moral. Daring. The saint offers to bring back a dead 
woman. Effect upon the family. 

— Interior (also called Home). 4 m. 5 f. Tragic. Set 
rather difficult. Atmosphere must be correct. Has been 
done effectively. 

Manners, J. Hartley. Happiness. 2 m. 2 f. Modern 
interior. Rather interesting. Better than the long ver- 
sion. Dodd, Mead and Co. 

Masefield, John. The Locked Chest. 3 m. 1 f. Extras. 
Costume, Iceland. Novel setting. Some tense moments. 

The Macmillan Co. 

Massey, Edward. Plots and Playwrights, n m. 6 f. 
Doubles possible. 4 scenes, really 2 acts. Satire on the 
regular drama and better drama. Excellent little theater 
material. Frequently produced. Playwright seeks drama- 
tic material. Har court, Brace & Co. 

Mencken, H. L. The Artist. 7 m. 3 f. or more. One 
character on stage, large number in the audience. The 
speeches are the thoughts of* people during a pianist's recital. 

Alfred A. Knopf. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 245 

Middleton, George. Embers. 2 m. 1 f. Modern Ameri- 
can interior. Acting fairly difficult. Can be made quite 
effective. Henry Holt and Company. 

— The Cheat of Pity.. 2 m. 1 f . Modern interior. Excel- 
lent treatment of alternation of pity and love between a 
woman and a man. Not too difficult if played with con- 
vincing quietness. Dramatic climax. 

Millay, Edna, St. V. Aria da Capo. 4 m. 1 f. A Pierrot- 
Columbine play, fancifully but interestingly showing how 
little the usual people have been affected by the great events 
of recent years. Black and white interior. 

Chapbook, 1920. 

Moeller, Philip. Helena's Husband. 3 m. 2 f. Helen of 
Troy and Paris treated farcically; references to recent 
events. Settings and costumes may be burlesqued. 

Alfred A. Knopf. 

■ — Pokey. 6 m. 3 f. 2 scenes, exterior set. Pocahontas, 
John Smith, as they might have been. Easy to act. Good 
for amateurs. 

Morrison and Pryce. The Dumb Cake. 1 m. 2 f. Hu- 
morous, pathetic. Interior set. Shows yearnings of a poor 
girl. Samuel French. 

Nathan, George Jean. The Letters. 3 m. 1 f . Burlesque 
of the hackneyed situation in regular plays when the hus- 
band finds the other man's epistles to his wife. Every 
speech is a single letter. Alfred A. Knopf. 

O'Neill, Eugene. Emperor Jones. 8 scenes. 8 m. 3 f. 
Pullman porter sovereign in an island. Seeks to flee. Re- 
verts to his own people. Original, strong. Leading role re- 
quires excellent acting. Theater Arts, 192 1. 

— 'He. 5 m. 1 f. Extras. Cabin interior. Stark drama 
of a sea captain whose wife yearns to be taken back, while 



246 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

he pushes on after whales. These two parts require good 
acting. Boni and Liveright. 

Oppenheim, James. Night. 4 m. i f. Symbolic, poetic. 
Remarkably effective if production is correct. 

Egmont Arens. 

Palmer, John. Over the Hills. 2 m. 2 f . One set. Two 
scenes. Good situation of the sedentary man who yearns 
for the great out-doors. Smart Set, 19 15. 

Phillips, Stephen. Nero's Mother. 2 m. 3 f. Extras. A 
good situation with two good acting parts. Can be beau- 
tifully but simply staged. John Lane. 

Phillpotts, Eben. The Carrier Pigeon. 2 m. 1 f. all old. 
Cottage bedroom. Old poacher squares with his enemy. 
Excellent. Duckworth. 

Quinteros. A Sunny Morning. Humorous Spanish 
scene. Colorful. Two good parts. Permits original set- 
ting. Poet-Lore, Vol. 27. 

Rice, Cale Young. The Immortal Lore. 4 roles. Tra- 
gedy, ancient India, poetry. Excellent for contrast. 

Doubleday, Page and Co. 

Rogers, Robert E. Behind a Watteau Picture. 14 m. 2 
f. Beautiful, poetic, novel. Always effective when well 
done. Baker and Co. 

Rostand, Edmond. The Romantics, also called Fantas- 
tics. Act 1 makes a charming costume play. Poetic. 5 of 
the parts are excellent. Garden set. Baker and Co. 

Schnitzler, Arthur. Anatol. 5 scenes. Small casts. All 
good. Clever, satiric situations of irregular amours. Dia- 
logue alone almost carries them. Any one may be given, 
or all to fill an evening. For sophisticated audiences. 

Mitchell Kennerley. 

— Literature. 2 m. 1 f . How two lovers used their letters 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 247 

as book material. Clever, satiric. Easy to produce. For 
sophisticated audiences. Stewart and Kidd. : 

Shaw, Bernard. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. 2 m. 2 
f. Shakespeare, Elizabeth. Beautiful stage pictures. Al- 
ways effective. Brentano. 

— Press Cuttings. 3 m. 3 f. Easy interior. All roles 
good. A ludicrous satire on interesting topics. 

— How He Lied to Her Husband. 2 m. 1 f . Interior. A 
clever turn to a trite situation. Always successful. 

— The Man of Destiny. 3 m. 1 f . Set simple or elabo- 
rate. Incident, early life of Napoleon. 

Stevens, Thomas Wood. Holbein at Blackfriars. 6 m. 2 f . 
The artist's studio. Delightful comedy of a meeting be- 
tween Henry VIII and the painter. Characters excellent. 
Costumes produce beautiful stage pictures. 

Stage Guild, Chicago. 

Strindberg, August. Simoon.. 2 m. 1 f. Tragedy of the 
desert. Interior. Highly wrought. Requires good acting. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— The Stronger., An original dialogue in which one wo- 
man does all the talking; the other must act so well that she 
appears to be the stronger. 

Sudermann, H. Fritzchen. 5 m. 2 f . One of the best one- 
act tragedies ever written. Interior set. A poignant play 
of Prussian militarism. 

Charles Scribner's Sons. 

— The Far- Away Princess. 2 m. 7 f. Charming treat- 
ment of how a princess responds to a chivalrous admiration. 
Excellent for young people. 

Sutro, Alfred. The Man in the Stalls. Also called The 
Man Out Front. 2 m. 1 f. Interior. An original twist 
to the usual triangle. Telling conclusion. Brentano. 



248 TWO HUNDRED PLAYS 

Symons, Arthur. Cleopatra in Judaea. 7 m. 3 f. Color- 
ful oriental pictures. Two good acting roles. Excellent 
contrast with modern plays. John Lane. 

Synge, John M. The Tinker's Wedding. 2 m. 2 f. 2 
scenes. Exterior. Tricks of a traveling group of ne'er-do- 
wells. One of the best known and most frequently acted 
Irish comedies. Luce and Co. 

— The Shadow of the Glen. 3 m. 1 f . Next in popularity, 
perhaps, to the preceding. A poetic tramp. Interior. Fairly 
easy for amateurs. Dialect requires care. 

— Riders to the Sea. 1 m. 3 f. Extras. One of the best 
tragedies. Requires excellent acting to produce proper ef- 
fect. Old woman's part difficult. Rude interior. 

Tagore, Rabindranath. Chitra. 4 roles. Novel for out- 
doors. Villagers. Everything depends upon method of pro- 
duction. Macmillan and Co. 

Tarkington, Booth. Beauty and the Jacobin. 3 m. 4 f. 
Humorous, tense scene from French Revolution. Almost a 
one man play. Harper Bros. 

Tchekoff, Anton. A Marriage Proposal. 2 m. 1 f. Easy 
to produce. Simple Russian interior. Frequently performed. 
All parts good. Samuel French. 

Torrence, Ridgley. The Rider of Dreams. 2 m. 1 f. 1 
child, all negroes. Interior. The father and husband lets 
his imagination run away with him. This role and the wife 
are good acting parts. Macmillan and Co. 

Walker, Stuart. Never-the-Less. 1 m. 1 boy, 1 girl. 
Two delightful children. Whimsical. Can be simply set. 
A delightful interlude. Stewart and Kidd. 

Wilde, Percival. Pawns. 6 m. An excellent preachment 
against war's horrors. Eastern Europe. The effect of mobil- 
ization upon simple peasant neighbors. Exterior. 

Little, Brown and Co. 



SUITABLE FOR AMATEURS 249 

Yeats, W. B. The Land of Heart's Desire. 3 m. 3 f. 
Plain interior. Tragic. Irish folk-lore. Requires care- 
ful production to evoke proper atmosphere. 

The Macmillan Co. 

— Cathleen Ni Hoidihan., 3 m. 3 f . Poetic treatment of 
war feeling. Requires just the proper treatment for its 
effect. Good atmosphere. 



INDEX 



Abbey Players, 143 

Abbey Theater, 40 

A Bear, 56 

Acting, 33, 44, 50, 58, 68, 71, 

207 
Active membership, 11 
Actors, 29 

Adams, Miss Maude, 58 
A Doll's House, 182 
Advantages of one-act plays, 

37 

Afgar, 145 

A Good Bargain, no 

Alfeth, 183 

All-girl cast, 144 

Altruism, 54, 130 

Amber lighting, 146, 174 

A Marriage Has Been Ar- 
ranged, 92 

A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
43, 116, 181, 219 

A Night at an Inn, 58, 73, no, 
161 

A Night's Lodging, 177 

Another Way Out, 54 

Androcles and the Lion, 177 

Aphrodite, 145 

Aristophanes, 64 

Aren't They Wonders? 50 

Arranging a season, 40 

Art and Opportunity, 61, 118 

Art staff, 98 

Art Theater, Moscovv, 181 

Artzibascheff, 189 

Asche, Oscar, 177 

Assistants, 61 

Associate membership, n 

As You Like It, 141, 209 

At the Villa Rose, 149 



Audience, 6, 30, 39, 58, 178, 
221 

Audience, response of, 223 
Augustus Does His Bit, 91 
Augustus in Search of a 

Father, 47 
A Woman's Way, 60 

Back of the house, 15 
Bacon, Francis, 55, 136, 138 
Barbara, 51 

Baring, Maurice, 47, 132 
Barker, Granville, 43, 61, 115, 

140, 172, 177, 182, 220 
Barrett, Marie, 57 
Barrie, James M., 17, 87 
Barrymore, John, 182 
Besier, Rudolph, 60, 61, 71, 81, 

122 
Beissier, 183 
Belasco, David, 152, 156 
Benavente, Jacinto, 57 
Benelli, Sem, 177 
Bennett, Arnold, 121 
Benrimo, 28 
Benson Company, 95 
Benson, Sir Frank R., 151, 202 
Beyond, 34, 35 
Beyond the H orison, 87, 112, 

182 
Black-Eyed Susan, 190 
Blue back-drop, 109, 123 
Bodenheim, M., 34 
Border lights, 158 
Borders, 103 
Bouchier, Arthur, 149 
Box set, 100 

Bracco, Roberto, 41, 52, 179 
Brieux, Eugene, 183 



251 



252 



INDEX 



Brighouse, Harold, S? 
British Arts League of Serv- 
ice, 46 
Brown, Alice, 47 
Brown, Maurice, 160 
Buchanan, Thompson, 60 
Budget, 16, 18 
Bushido, 50, 54, 144 
Business committee, 15 

Calderon, George, 191 

Calthrop, 61, 172, 220 

Candida, 1 1 1 

Cannan, Gilbert, 57 

Caprice, S3, 133 

Caragiale, T. L., 61 

Carnegie Institute, 221 

Carrion an 1 Aza, 116 

Casting, 11, 45, 64, 74 

Cast reading, 75 

Celtic Players, 141 

Chapin, Harold, 47, 61, 118 

Chanticleer, 59 

Characterization, 202, 205 

Characters, descriptions of, 

208 
Chesterton, G. K., 61 
Children, 32 
Choosing a Career, 50 
Choosing the play, 23 
Chu Chin Chow, 145, 149, 177 
Churches, 1 
Circles, 58 
Circus methods, 145 
Classics, 62 

Class presentation of plays, 214 
Classroom plays, 215 
Coburn, Charles D., 28 
Color, 96, 136, 154 
Color, painting with, 171 
Comedie Franchise, 54 
Comedies of Nations, 52 
Comedies of Words, 53 
Committee on Memorials, 2 
Community centers, 2 
Community drama, 64 
Community Theater, 7 
Comus, 218, 219 



Contrast in a bill, 48, 49 
Conventionalized pantomime, 

200 
Cooperation, 64 
Cooperative plans, 16 
Copyright, 28 
Copyright law, 25 
Corneau, P. B., 51 
Costume plays, 62 
Costumes, 19, 135, 180, 206 
Costuming Shakespeare plays, 

140 
Craig, Gordon, 43, 181 
Crises, 85 

Criticism of acting, 224 
Curtains, 94 
Cutting, 67, 77, 86 
Cyclorama, 94, 109, 172 

D'Annunzio, G., 41 
DeBussy, 184 
DeCaillavet, G. A., 50 
Delineation, 205 
Dell, Floyd, 81 
DeMille, William C, 180 
DeMusset, Alfred, 52, 133 
Descriptions of Characters, 208 
Development from studying 

roles, 213 
Dialogue, 203 

Difficulty of one-act plays, 36 
Diminutive Dramas, 132 
Dimmers, 153 
Director, 65 
Doctor Faustus, 186 
Don, 61, 71, 81, 122 
Down, Oliphant, 58 
Dramatic rights, 27 
Dream of an Autumn Sunset, 

4i 
Dreiser, Theodore, 34, 35, 57 
Dregs, 7 
Dress rehearsal, 7, 62, 163, 

222, 223 
Drinkwater, John, 76, 177 
Dues, 16 
Dunsany, Lord, 34, 56, 60, 73, 

110, 131, 145, 161, 205 



INDEX 



2 53 



Echegaray, Jose, 61 
Eckersley, Arthur, 159 
Educational development, 213 
Educational dramatics, 197 
Effects, 69 
Electra, 7, 145 
Elizabethan manner, 90, 186 
Elisabeth Cooper, 219 
Emotion, J2 
Errors in lighting, 174 
Ervine, St. John, 42, 179 
Essay on Comedy, 190 / 

Ettinger, Karl, 54, 130 
Everybody's Husband, 57 
Evreinov, 34, 42, 43, 181, 195 
Exercises, 202, 204, 218 
Expense, 16 
Expenses, 18 
Expense sheets, 21 
Expenses, miscellaneous, 20 
Experimental material, 38 
Experimenting, 176 
Experiments, 42 
Eye for an Eye, 61 
Eyvind of the Hills, 187 

Factors in choice of plays, 28 

Failures, 31 

Fame and the Poet, 205 

Fancy Free, 91 

Fanny and the Servant Prob- 
lem, 61, 117 

Faversham, W., 177 

Finance committee, 15 

Finances, 18 

Fines, 12, 28 

Fitch, Clyde, 60 

Flats, 100 

Flood light, 159 

Follies, 50 

Food, 180 

Footlights, 153 

Forestage, 154 

47 Workshop, Harvard, 187, 
221 

Front of the house, 15 

Full-length plays, 32, 59, 84 

Funds, 5 



Galsworthy, John, 60, 61, 174, 

183, 189 
Game of Chess, 41 
Gammer Gurton's Needle, 185 
Gerstenberg, Alice, 34, 42, 52, 

193 
Getting Married, 177 
Ghosts, 7 
Giacosa, 41, 60 
Gilbert, 61 

Glaspell, Susan, 54, ys 
Glory of the Morning, 56 
Goethe, 182 
Gogol, N., 181 
Goldoni, Carlo, 60 
Goodman, K. S., 51 
Gorky, M., 177 
Grand Guignol, 34, 41 
Greek costumes, 145 
Greek tragedy. 39 
Green Stockings, 61, 206 
Greenwich Village, 54 
Gregory, Lady, 61, 130, 175 
Grotesques, 34, 35, 194 
Guarantors, 16 

Hadda Padda, 188 

Hamlet, 95, 112, 142, 161, 182, 

197, 208, 218, 219 
Hammersmith, Lyric Theater, 

140 
Hampden, Walter, 177, 182 
Hankin, St. John, 42, 57, 61, 

179 
Harmony, 10 

Harvard, 47 Workshop, 187 
Hastings, B. MacDonald, 188 
Hauling, 20 

Ha wkb ridge, Winifred, 56 
Hazelton, George C, 28 
Head, Cloyd, 34, 194 
Hecht, Ben, 34 
Hedda G abler, 60 
Helena's Husband, 56 
Her Husband's Wife, 61 
Herrick, Robert, 60 
Her Tongue, 47 
Hervieu, Paul, 60 



254 



INDEX 



Hindle Wakes, 122 

Hiring costumes, 139 

His Widow's Husband, 57 

Hoffmanstal, 145 

Honesty, 25 

Hopkins, Arthur, 85, 156, 177 

Houghton, Stanley, 91, 118 

Housman, Laurence, 6o> 120, 

164 
How's Your Second Act? 85 
How Very Shocking, 183 
Humor, 137 

Ibsen, Henrik, 60, 73, 183 

Improvisation, 202 

In April, 55 

Inconsistencies of costumes, 

139 
Interiors, 104, 106, 120 
Interpretation, yj, 81 
In the Zone, 34, 36, 57, 73 
Irish Renaissance, 40 
Italo-Greek costumes, 141 
Izumo, Takeda, 50 

Jerome, Jerome K., 61, 117 

Jerrold, Douglas, 190 

Jogs, 105 

Joint Owners in Spain, 47, 56 

Jones, Bassett, 158 

Jones, Henry Arthur, 47 

Jones, Inigo, 90 

Jonson, Ben, 90, 184, 220 

Joy, 61 

Julius Ccesar, 142, 209, 219 

June Madness, 60 

Justice, 7, 174 

Kahn, N. M., 51 

Kamban, 188 

Kemp, Harry, 51 

Kennedy, Charles Rann, 173 

Kinds of plays, 38 

King Lear, 87, 95 

Kreymborg, A., 34, 11 1 

Laboratory theaters, 8 
Lady Patricia, 60 



Lady Windermere's Fan, 210 

Lamb, Charles, 53 

Langner, Lawrence, 54 

Laughing Gas, 34, 35 

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 22, 
118 

Leishin, M., 51 

Le Medecin Malgre Lui, in, 
118 

L'Enfant Prodigue, 184 

Leonard, Ellery, 56 

Les Romanesques, 139 

Lighting, 20, 152 

Lighting arrangement for The 
Chinese Lantern, 165 

Lighting equipment, 153 

Lighting, errors in, 174 

Lighting for emotional effect, 
172 

Light, planes of, 171 

Lima Beans, in 

List of short plays for class- 
room study, 215 

Literature, 52 

Little Theater, Chicago, 160 

Little Theater, New York, 159 

Local name, 7 

Lonesome-Like, 57 

L'Oracolo, 169 

Love's Labor's Lost, no, 124 

Lyric Theater, Hammersmith, 
140 

Lysistrata, 8, 64 

Macbeth, 70, 141, 210 
MacDougall's Barn, 8 
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 55, 92, 

193 

Magic, 61 

Make-up, 20, 135, 146 

Make-up types, 147 

Malvolio. 71 

Mannikin and Minnikin, 34, 35 

Manuscript, 26 

Marlowe, Christopher, 186 

Masques, 5, 90, 136, 185 

Mason, A. E. W., 61, 206 

Master Pierre Patelin, $7 



INDEX 



255 



Matsuo, 50 

Maude, Cyril, 206 

Mecca, 145 

Membership, 11 

Memorials, 2, 3 

Memorial Theater, Stratford- 

on-Avon, 141 
Memorizing, 77, 216 
Mencken, H. L., 42, 194 
Mercury Vindicated, 220 
Meredith, George, 190 
Metcalf, James, 157 
Middleton, George, 58 
Milton, John, 218 
Miracle of St. Anthony, 55 
Miscasting, 29, 76 
Miss Nelly of N' Orleans, 174 
Models of scenery, 218 
Moeller, Phillip, 55, 56, 128 
Moliere, 60, 61, ill 
Money, 16 

Monotony, 10, 49, 87, 110, 135 
Monti, 183 
Moore, George, 219 
Morrison, Arthur, 58 
Moscow Art Theater, 43 
Moveable footlights, 155 
Movements, 5 
Mrs. Bumstead-Leigh, 61 
Mrs. Calhoun, 34, 36 
Music, 14 
Music director, 14 

Name, 6 
Napoleon, 57 
Neighborhood House, 7 
New Shakespeare Company, 

Stratford-on-Avon, 141 
New York Theater Guild, 8, 

59 
Nirdlinger, Charles F., 50 
Notice of copyright, 26 

Obedience, 69 

Objects, 23 

Observation in make-up, 151 

Officers, 12 

One-act plays, 32, 34, 83 



One-act plays, advantages, 37 
One-act plays, difficulties, 37 
One-act plays, stage settings, 

38 
O'Neill, Eugene, 34, 57, 73, 87, 

112, 182 
Open-air performances, 92 
Organization, 9 
Oriental costumes, 145 
Orthodoxy, 195 
Over the Hills, 58 
Overtones, 42, 52, 193 

Pageants, 5 

Paid admissions, 17 

Painting with color, 171 

Palmer, John, 58 

Pantomime, 183, 198 

Paradise Found, 192 

Parody Theater, Petrograd, 181 

Participation, 11, 12 

Pelleas and Melisande, 92 

Penalties for violation of 
copyright, 27 

Phillips, Stephen, 125 

Phillpotts, Eben, 122 

Pierrot and the Widow, 57 

Pierrot's Christmas, 183 

Pierrot the Prodigal, ill, 133, 
184 

Pinafore, 60 

Pinero, Arthur Wing, 60 

Piracy, 27 

Planes of light, 171 

Platforms, 101 

Play-reading committee, 14 

Plays for classroom presen- 
tation, 215 

Plays, full-length, 59 

Plebiscites, 41 

Pokey, 128 

P old e kin, 182 

Policies, S 

Polonius, 38 

Polti, 182 

Portmanteau Theater, 8 

Postage, 18 

Princess Theater, 36 



256 



INDEX 



Principles of choosing plays, 

46 
Printing, 18 
Producer, 12 

Productions committee, 13 
Professional make-up, 150 
Profiles, 112 
Programs, specimen, 46 
Prunella, 60 
Pryce, Richard, 58 
Purpose, 6, 9, 23 
Putnam, Nina, W., 195 

Reading of plays, 45 
Realistic settings, 97 
Reforming the drama, 9 
Rehearsal, 19, 62, 64, 220 
Rehearsing, 213 
Reinhardt, Max, 145, 177 
Rental, 17, 18 

Responses of audiences, 223 
Revolving stage, 94 
Rhythm, 70, 71, 85 
Riders to the Sea, 84, 219 
Richard III, 182, 218 
Romeo and Juliet, 219 
Rostand, Edmond, 139 
Royalty, 19, 25 

Sabotage, 14 

Sacred Ground, 60 

Scenery, 17, 93 

Scene designing, 217 

Scenery designs, 74 

Scenery models, 218 

School courses, 197 

School stage equipment, 1 15 

Schnitzler, Arthur, 52 

Settings, 19, 90 

Seventeen, 160 

Shading, 73 

Shadows, 158, 174, 196 

Shakespeare, 55, 181 

Sharp, William, 194, 219 

Shaw, G. Bernard, 25, 57, 58, 

61, 91, 108, 177, 183 
Shelley, P. B., 187 



Siddons, Mrs., 71 
Sides, 7S 

Sigurjonsson, 187 
Simoon, 57 
Smith, H. J., 61 
Sothern, E. H., 182 
Specimen programs, 46 
Speech, 80, 203, 206, 216 
Speed, 67 
Spot light, 159 
Stage directions, 210 
Stage equipment, 17 
Stage-manager, 13 
Stardom, 9 
Stella, 182 
Stock companies, 10 
Stock pieces of scenery, 93 
Stokes, Rose Pastor, 55 
Stratford-on-Avon, 141 
Strauss, R., 145 
Strindberg, August, 57, III 
Strip lights, 158 
Study, 77 
Sudermann, 116 
Sullivan, 61 
Sumurum, 145, 177 
Supernatural lighting, 161 
Suppressed Desires, 73 
Sutro, Alfred, 57, 92 
Synge, John M., 61, in, 148, 
219 

Tagore, R., 132 

Tapestries, 96 

Tarkington, Booth, 182 

Tchekoff, Anton, 56 

Test of performance, 220 

The Angel Intrudes, 81 

The Artist, 42, 194 

Theater Guild of New York, 8, 

3i, 37 . 
The Aulis Difficulty, 132 
The Box of Toys, 184 
The Cassilis Engagement, 61 
The Cenci, 187 
The Cherry Orchard, 58 
The Chinese Lantern, 120, 164 
The Coffee House, 60 






INDEX 



257 



The Comedy of Errors, 84, 112 

119, 125, Hi 
The Constant Lover, 41, 57, 

179 
The Darling of the Gods, 152 
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 

58 
The Dear Departed, 118 
The Drawback, 47 
The Dumb Cake, 58 
The Far- Away Princess, 116 
The Florist Shop, 56 
The Fountain, 191 
The Girl in the Coffin, 8, 57 
The Glittering Gate, 34, 36 
The Gods of the Mountain, 60 
The Golden Apple, 61 
The Harlequinade, 61, 115, 172, 

220 
The Holiday, 14 
The Honeymoon, 121 
The Honorable Lover, 41, 52, 

179 
The Idol, Si 
The Importance of Being 

Earnest, 61 
The Inspector-General, 43, 181 
Their Country, 51 
The Jest, 59, 177 
The Keepers of the Light, 34 
The King and Queen, 132 
The Lady from the Sea, 60 
The Learned Ladies, 60, 61 
77* e Lodger, 44, 66 
TAe Lo^f S7/fc Haf, 56 
The Lute-Player, 219 
77*£ Magnanimous Lover, 42, 

179 
77t<? Maker of Dreams, 58 
77i£ Man of Destiny, 57 
77*<? Marriage Will Not Take 

Place, 57 
The Maternal Instinct, 60 
The Merchant of Venice, 87, 

95 
The Mob, 189 
T/z? New Sin, 189 
77*e Passing of the Torch, 60 



The Pigeon, 60 

The Playboy of the Western 

World, 61, in, 143, 148 
The Point of View, 122 
The Prodigal Son, 51 
The Queen's Enemies, $7 
The Return of Peter Grimm, 

108 
The Rising of the Moon, 130 
The Roadhouse in Arden, 55 
The Ruined Lady, 58 
The Shadowy Waters, 175 
The Silent Woman, 184 
The Sponge Cure, 49 
The Still Alarm, 190 
The Storm, 123 
The Stranger, 60 
The Stronger, in 
The Tabloid, 159 
77*2 Taming of the Shrew, 119 
The Tempest, 219 
77*£ Tents of the Arabs, 131 
77*£ Terrible Meek, 173 
77t£ Theater of the Soul, 34, 

35, 42, 181, 195 
The Thunderbolt, 60 
The Tragedy of Nan, 122 
The Truth, 60 

The Warrior's Husband, 183 
The World and His Wife, 61 
The Yellow Jacket, 28 
Thomas, A. E., 61 
Thompson, Julian, 183 
Toy Theater, 7 
7Vt7fej, 54 
Try-outs, 75 
Twelfth Night, 43, 71, no, 120, 

125, 141, 144, 181, 219 
Typoscript, 19, 26 



Ubermarrionet, 196 

Ulysses, 125 

Union stage hands, 17 

Unit sizes of scenery, 105 

United States copyright law, 

University audiences, 24 



258 



INDEX 



Upward, Allen, 192 
Urban, Josef, 218 

Variety, 10, 38, 61, 190 
Vistas, 194 

War, 189 

War Camp Community Serv- 
ice, 2 

Washington Square Players, 
30, 37, 50, 52, 133, 179 

Webster, Henry K., 60 

What Every Woman Knows, 
8Z 



Whims, 52, 133 

Why Marryt 58 

Wigs, 149 

Wilde, Oscar, 61, 183 

Williams, Olin, 57 

Workshops, 8, 63 

Writers of one-act plays, 37 

Yeats, W. B., 175, 193 
You Never Can Tell, 61, 108, 
in 

Zaragiieta, 116 



SEEN ON THE STAGE by Clayton Hamilton 

The fourth of this noted critic's books on the con- 
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authors including O'Neill, Dunsany, Ervine, Drinkwater, 
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Brander Matthews in New York Times: "His four volumes 
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three qualifications which a critic ought to possess — insight and 
sympathy and disinterestedness. These plays are vital and 
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For Outdoors or Indoors. They also include Pan 
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Evening Post: ". . .A welcome contribution to the litera- 
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. . . An author of promising originality, taste and style. . . ." 

The Drama: "... Treasures to the seeker for suitable 
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THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 

by Guy Bolton and Geo. Middleton 

A drama showing what befell a Passion Player who 
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